by Gulf Seafood News Staff
The plight of the Louisiana fishermen from the four hurricanes over the past two years is starting to get national attention. A February 1st article in the New York Times deals with the plight of the industry since Hurricane Ida, and the effect it is having on the region’s rich culture of food and fishing.
On the Cajun Coast, a Chef Grapples With Threats to a Seafood Tradition by Brett Anderson details how the coexistence of abundance and vulnerability shapes lives and priorities in Chauvin and elsewhere on Louisiana’s Cajun coast, south of New Orleans.
Melissa Martin cooks the seafood she grew up eating in Chauvin, La., at Mosquito Supper Club, her restaurant in New Orleans. Her cookbook and commitment to the culture is a favorite of James Carville, former CNN political analyst. Photo: Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times
The region, central to the state’s commercial fishing industry, lost land to the effects of climate change, which also makes storms wetter and more powerful.
The area provides the inspiration for Chef Melissa Martin’s restaurant, Mosquito Supper Club, and her 2020 cookbook of the same name. The damage Ida caused the coast provided the impetus for a fund-raising effort, started on a website Ms. Martin built in the passenger seat of her car, that has collected more than $765,000 to aid residents on the still storm-battered coast, much of it distributed in cash in partnership with the Helio Foundation, a nonprofit based in Houma.
Chef Martin is one of the up and coming culinary talents in the state. She is blunt about the toll this environmental crisis has already taken. The recipes featured in her book, subtitled “Cajun Recipes From a Disappearing Bayou,” and at her restaurant represent a culture whose days she believes are numbered. And the demise of an area that serves as a storm buffer for densely populated areas to the north, and that contains billions of dollars’ worth of energy infrastructure, will be felt everywhere.
“When this land disappears, it takes with it a portion of our nation’s safety and food supply, and a long legacy of culture and traditions,” she writes in her book. “Water is our lifeline and our dark shadow.”
Her cookbook and commitment to the culture is a favorite of James Carville, former CNN political analyst. In a recent interview with Gulf Seafood News he praised the chef’s effort of telling the story of the culture through its food.
Ewell Smith, a member both the Gulf Seafood Foundation and the Louisiana Fishing Community Recovery Coalition, feels articles from the Gulf Seafood Newsroom are starting to inspire other publications like the New York Times to cover the industry’s plight.
“With so many natural disasters across the country, it’s important our cause remains continuously in the public eye. It’s imperative congressional members, from our state as well as from others, recognize we’re all in this together; be it the recent tornados that devastated Kentucky, the fires in California or a hurricanes along the Gulf and East Coast…even all the way to New York and Boston,” he said. “That’s what inspired us to create the Gulf Seafood Newsroom; to work with our Gulf sister states. It’s important.”
This needs attention! Agree!