Louisiana oysterman Jakov Jurisic is no stranger to adversity. As a fourth-generation oysterman in Plaquemine Parish, he has overcome hurricanes, oil spills and a lot of unwanted fresh water. Photo: Ed Lallo/Lallo Photography
The Gulf oyster industry, along with other Gulf seafood, is in a historic nosedive never before seen. The perfect storm of too much water, a national pandemic and the closure of restaurant after restaurant have forced those in the industry to reexamine the path forward.
Louisiana oysterman Jakov Jurisic is no stranger to adversity. As a fourth-generation oysterman in Plaquemine Parish, he has overcome hurricanes, oil spills and a lot of unwanted fresh water.
One year ago, Newsroom Ink’s CEO Ed Lallo sat down with the Jurisic at his Belle Chase home just before the State was stricken with a historic outbreak of Covid-19. Even before the full affects of the coronavirus further devastated the industry, he expressed concern about both his future and that of the industry due to breeches of the State’s levee system, a proposed “freshwater diversion” by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) and the demise of the State’s public oyster grounds.
“The way I see it, it is a catastrophe. In my forty-plus years in this career I’ve never seen it this way,” said Jurisic, sitting at his kitchen table. “I’ve talked to my colleagues who are in this line of work for 40-50 years and they have never seen it like this either.”
The Gulf oyster industry, along with other Gulf seafood, is in a historic nosedive never before seen. The perfect storm of too much water, a national pandemic and the closure of restaurant after restaurant have forced those in the industry to reexamine the path forward. Photo: Ed Lallo/Lallo Photography
For the Croatian-American oysterman, the restoration of the public seed grounds managed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries needs to be priority one. Since the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the public grounds have failed to produce the oysters that once provided oystermen the seed for their leases.
On a majority of the state public oyster grounds “there is no oyster production what-so-ever, none, zero,” he said.
During a recent Fisheries Forward Summit in New Orleans, Brandt LaFrance and Jakov discuss oysters at the Louisiana Oyster Task Force booth. Photo: Ed Lallo/Lallo Photography
“We used to produce east of the (Mississippi) river between public and private grounds somewhere in the neighborhood of a million and a half oysters a year,” he went on to explain. “We produce absolutely nothing now, zero. At today’s price we are looking at somewhere near $100 million dollars a year. That is nothing now.”
Before the oil spill, public oyster grounds used to produce 60% of the State’s oyster harvest, current production is approximately one percent.
According to Jurisic the spill is not the only reason the public seed grounds remain unproductive. Numerous Mississippi River crevasses, a deep fracture in the levee system, have allowed fresh water to flow unchecked into the estuaries and oyster growing grounds. The fresh water damages the estuaries vital to a host of fisheries, including oysters.
“Are these crevasses responsible for why we have no production east of the river, It’s possible, I don’t know. That is for science to answer,” said the Louisiana Oyster Task Force member.
The outspoken oysterman feels that if the proposed “freshwater diversion” by the CPRA takes place, the oyster industry is finished in the Bayou State. He feels both the proposed Mid Barataria Sediment Diversion and the Mid Breton Sediment Diversion will have a huge negative financial impact, not only on oysters, but also fish, shrimp, crawfish and crab.
The Louisiana Oyster Task Force members invested more than $100 million to restore their private leases since the BP Oil Spill. Photo: Ed Lallo/Lallo Photography
Jurisic sees the only reason Louisiana currently has any oyster production at all is because the close to $100 million financial investment Louisiana Oyster Task Force members made in restoring their private leases after the BP Oil Spill. The proposed freshwater diversion could severely impact that oyster production.
“We have no friends in the government. None. Zero,” he said. “We have been abandoned by parish officials, state officials and our elected senators and representatives.”
While freshwater diversion could impact the future of the industry, the current catastrophic coronavirus has brought the industry to a near standstill.
With tourism almost non-existent and restaurants either closed, closing, or operating at a reduced capacity; the backbone of the commercial oyster industry has been broken, with little chance of quick recovery.
For Jakov and his wife Deanna, the seafood industry is not just an economic impact; it is a way of life, it’s tradition, it’s culture, it’s history. Photo: Ed Lallo/Lallo Photography
“My great grandfather was here to make a better living for himself, so was my grandfather and father.” When asked where he sees the next generation of oystermen coming from, Jurisic laughs and says, “that’s a very good question, but what I am seeing are Latino’s from Central America and Mexico coming to the State of Louisiana.”
For the Plaquemine Parish oysterman the survival of the Louisiana oyster industry really comes down to one thing, the restoration of the public seed grounds.
“We have to restore the public seed grounds. If we don’t do that we will have no industry in the next 10-15 years. The seafood industry in general in this part of the State of Louisiana is not just economic impact; it is a way of life, it’s tradition, it’s culture, it’s history,” he explained. If we allow that to disappear, shame on us.”
I do have some experience with your sort of love/hate with the river. A decade ago we published this paper, with a review, about two flawed papers on Louisiana oysters, one on diversions, one on predicted overfishing. It is available as a pdf.
https://aquila.usm.edu/goms/vol29/iss1/1/
Apparently mostly ignored we, along with two other papers, did get a response —-while admitting that leased Louisiana grounds were “significant” and could not collect data on such “rarely surveyed” they excluded their importance as they were not “natural” therefore “…we seek to end the debate.” This is also available as —
zu Ermgessen, P. S. E., et al. 2012. Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. 279:3393-3400. . https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2012.0313
Another paper concluded that Louisiana oysters have lost most of their “filtration capacity” in over a century—zu Ermgessen, P. S. E., et al. 2013. Quantifying the loss of a marine ecosystem service: filtration by the eastern oyster in US estuaries. Estuaries and Coasts. 36:36-43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-012-9559-y
The master plan for oysters, which has at least 5 flaws which I just wrote two Louisiana colleagues about, used their first paper extensively. http://coastal.la.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Attachment-C3-12_FINAL_02.20.2019.pdf
When the oldest scientific organization in the world allows the suggestion of censorship about oysters, and the Louisiana Master Plan includes it as a significant part of its model development, which is in itself statistically suspect, you do have a problem. Models are only hypotheticals, most are useful but wrong and they need both validation and verification, that is internal consistency and proven in the “real world.” The master plan review does, incompletely I suggest, bring this up. http://coastal.la.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Attachment-C5-1_FINAL_03.13.2017.pdf
I think I am still a member of the Louisiana certified oyster biologist group and have 6 decades of on and off experience with oysters, mostly in Louisiana, but from Texas to Virginia where I learned about them. Because of age and retirement we did not respond to the zu Ermgessen papers but I wrote up some notes, some of which I am using in a coastal book manuscript which has a chapter on oysters. If you will send me an e-mail contact I will send you the notes and perhaps some suggestions. You need a real oyster biologist as this may be the same group that wanted to put oysters on the Endangered Species List.
Thank you for you insight.