A crab boat laden with traps navigating the debris filled Bayou Barataria. Photo: Jim Gossen/Gulf Seafood News
by Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News Editor
A large majority of Louisiana’s crabs comes from the waters of the Barataria Estuary, situated between the Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche. Scott Sugasti has been on those waters working his traps since an early age, and as one of the younger crabbers on the bayou he knows hard work is the key to success. Since Hurricane Ida he has had to work harder at avoiding numerous pitfalls the storm has caused for local fishermen.
Taking a break from working the crab dock, Sugasti says he has been on the water since he was in diapers. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
At the age of 23, the Barataria native says he has been on the water since he was in diapers. “This is my way of life. It is the only thing I’ve ever known,” he said.
Sugasti started crabbing on his own at the age of 13, never afraid to be alone on the water. While in high school he would get up at the crack of dawn and head out in his boat. “I used to go before and after school. I would wake up at three in the morning all the time and head out to run my traps.”
Over the years he has started and stopped a number of times, but it became his daily occupation when he bought his first boat from his grandfather, Jimmy Matherne, two years ago.
Ida and Its Debris
Both the boat and Sugasti survived Hurricane Ida, but the storm has left behind a wrath of unseen problems, mostly hidden under the murky waters of the bayous and canals.
Smoking a cigarette on a wooden dock, feet dangling over the water, he waited for crab boats to unload. “I’m over here at the crab dock helping the guys out,” he explained. “I’m just trying to work while I’m out of work.”
Sugasti started crabbing on his own at the age of 13, never afraid to be alone on the water. While in high school he would get up at the crack of dawn and head out in his boat. Photo: Scott Sugasti
The young fisherman was out of work after his boat hit debris in the water, bending the shaft and motor unit causing more the $600 in damages. “I’m must trying to make some money. Basically I take crabs out of the boat, bring the to the front, pack them, put them in boxes and have them sent off.”
He says since the storm seafood businesses along the bayou are having a hard time finding labor. During his shift he will unload more than 25 boats tying up to the dock.
Besides the damage to his boat, Hurricane Ida has cost him other expenses. “I’ve lost money because of the storm, more than 100 traps are gone. I am just trying to rebuild what I had before.”
Debris in the bayous and smaller canals is a huge problem. He says, “Its bad, very bad out there. The problem is that it’s all under the water. You can’t see it. None of it is marked because none of it was there before the hurricane.”
“I had one of my friends call me and asked if I was on my boat. He needed help. He was right here in Bayou Barataria and was caught up on a boat trailer. That bayou is 30 feet deep. You can imagine how much stuff had to be stacked up just for him reach that. There are still boats sunk in the middle of the bayou.”
Scott visits with his grandfather Michael Roberts, a longtime Barataria crabber and fisherman. Photo: Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News
While visiting with members of the Louisiana Fishing Community Recovery Coalition, he expressed the need for comprehensive debris removal and dredging of bayous and canals.
“You always mark the spot when you hit something in the water,” he explained. “We all have flyers. You mark the spot and you share it with all the fishermen. The problem is that the debris moves. It gets dragged by fishing nets, tides and of course the next hurricane that comes along.”
He says crabbers try to remove as much debris as they can load onto their boats, and believes there should be a facility to bring the debris for compensation by the state. “The have what is called a ‘hang fund’ for the shrimpers, but they don’t do that for crabbers. We need that program extended to all fishermen.”
Ida’s wrath laid waste to the Jean Lafitte and Barataria area, however both shrimp and crab harvest picked up after the storm. “There is a lot of seafood after hurricanes, old fishermen know that,” said the young crabber.
Entrepreneurial Youth
After the last winds of Ida lay quiet, Sugasti purchased a small shrimp boat to fish the inland waters of the bay. “Fishermen were routinely catching 10,000 lbs of shrimp after the storm. I bought the boat because I knew I could make money. When the State closed shrimping in the bay I sold the boat.”
The very entrepreneurial youth says he just “like to work. You are always going to have off days. I don’t do well with off days. I bought it because I saw what was happening.”
Sugasti doesn’t see the greying of the fleet in Lafitte. He says a lot of kids he went to school with entering crabbing, as well as other aspects of fishing.
“There are fishermen out there older than me, and there are some out there younger than me. It’s not like there are only old people that do this. Around here it gets passed down from generation to generation,” he explained.
Sugasti doesn’t see the greying of the fleet in Lafitte. Scott with his younger brother Brandon on board his crab boat at the dock. Photo: Scott Sugasti
The Barataria crabber agrees that you just don’t jump into fishing out of nowhere. The fishermen in his area have been doing this all their life and passing it on to the next generation.
“It’s something you have to be raised with because it is a lot of work,” the crabber said. “If you aren’t raised with it you aren’t going to love it enough to do it. There are plenty of people down here who have lived with the water their entire lives and do know how to do it. They are fine with the amount of work it takes. That whole greying of the fleet thing, I don’t see that here.”
Getting started in crabbing isn’t easy. It’s costly to buy a boat; traps and other equipment need to be successful. Sugasti says it’s possible to buy and boat and get into the business, but you have to know what you are doing before getting out on the water.
“I’ve worked with a lot of different people on this bayou. I was taught by some of the best. A lot of very old and very good fishermen,” he said. “It took me years to learn how to go off and do this by myself. I still don’t know it all and have more to learn. If you lose one generation of these fishermen, you’re screwed. If you lose this local knowledge, it’s gone forever.”
The key for crabbing to him is work ethic. Taking the time to learn the ways of the water is important to becoming successful. Reinvesting in the business is essential. “You can have 3000 traps in the water, but if you don’t have the work ethic to go out there and run 1000 of them in a day you are not going to catch as much as someone who did. You can say I take my money and spend it; it seems to go as fast as it comes in.
The more you work, the more traps you buy, the more you put in the water. It’s an expensive business to be in.”
Social media has become a connection and unifying force for younger fishermen. He says he talks regularly with other fishermen across the state from all aspects of the industry and believes they are more united as a group than generations past.
“Fishermen, regardless of age, are skeptical people. They only reason we talk to each other more is because we have seen fishermen over the years not talk to each other,” he said. “ But we are getting closer together all the time. We need to see some things happen before we will get behind anything and we are still along way from that.”
The Barataria crabber would like to see a more united Louisiana fishing community because he believes it would make the industry stronger and command better prices for their fish.
“Fishermen feel like they don’t got no power, we are small people that don’t have big voices. We would like to see someone get behind us,” Sugasti told Gulf Seafood News.
“There are a lot of fishermen that don’t think it’s going to make a difference,” he said “They come from a generation that were really clannish; only caring about their bayou, not the next one over. Fishermen will organize around an issue, but then that eventually fade away.”
He says, “Nobody is going to throw their time into an organization or commit to a group where they have to have meetings every week, or have to drive across the state, if nothing is going to happen. You see how hard we work, and we aren’t rich. We can’t take that kind of time if it’s not going to do anything.”
He says there is a vacuum of support outside the industry. If fishermen are to become more united, someone with some kind of power needs stand up and do something for Louisiana’s fishermen.
“Fishermen feel like they don’t got no power, we are small people that don’t have big voices. We would like to see someone get behind us,” he told Gulf Seafood News.
According the savvy crabber, fishery disaster money allocated by Congress has not reached any fishermen in his local community. “There are a lot a grants that are suppose to go to fishermen that we don’t get. There was money after the hurricane that was supposes to go to fishermen; a lot of them never got any of that. We always seem to get left out.”
Even with all hardship and turmoil he says he will always be a fisherman. “I don’t know anything else. Why would I quit?”
Never left pots or boat in water when a hurricane was approaching.
People who commercial fish have a love of the water or they would not work as hard as it is to survive fishing.