Tag: Hurricane Ida
Sitting on Bayou Rigaud in Grand Isle at the southernmost end of LA 1, the docks at Blanchard Seafood plant are about as close to the Gulf of Mexico as possible without getting wet. When Hurricane Ida struck the island that all changed.
LSU Sea Grant, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and members of the Louisiana Fishing Community Recovery Coalition have crafted a five-page “white paper” on the extreme damage and loss of revenue to the Louisiana seafood industry as a result of four hurricanes during the years of 2020-21. All five sectors of the industry have suffered; commercial fishermen, recreation fishing, docks, processors and marinas.
Four hurricanes over the course of two-years has cost the Louisiana seafood industry almost a $580 million dollar loss to infrastructure, revenue and resources. A recently released report by Louisiana Sea Grant and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries documents extreme damage and loss of revenue over all five sectors of the industry; commercial fishermen, recreational fishing, docks, processors and marinas.
For more than six hours fifth-generation Houma oysterman Jacob David Hulse, his girlfriend Lindsey Willis and his dog Change huddled in an the oyster shop of friend Kenneth (Keno) Templet struggling to keep the walls and roof from caving as the more than 140-mph winds of Hurricane Ida continuously battered away at the structure. When the winds started to subside, Hulse thought he had gone through the worse of it. Like many Louisiana fishermen are finding out, his troubles were only beginning after the storm was finished.
On August 29, 2021 Hurricane Ida blasted ashore along the Louisiana coast almost complete destroying everything in its path. Infrastructure was hard hit, especially infrastructure vital to Louisiana’s $2.4 billion seafood industry. Four months later little has changed, and the state’s fishermen, docks, processors, fish houses and restaurants are wondering if it will ever return.
Louisiana Sea Grant and LSU AgCenter have partnered with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to compile an economic assessment of fisheries infrastructure damage from hurricanes that have devastated one of the State’s largest industries during the past two years.
For every hurricane during the past 40-years Preston Dore has rode out the storms at the Delcambre docks on his shrimp boat. After Katrina, Gustav, Isaac and a host of others, both he and the boat have walked away mostly unscathed. Hurricane Ida was different. The storm has cost him his boat, his livelihood and has stripped away his dignity as a provider for his family.
For almost two hours Louisiana’s seafood leaders from all sectors of the industry gathered via zoom, mobile phones at restaurants or in cars, and in a conference room in Baton Rouge to discuss the damage of Hurricane Ida’s wrath on the State’s seafood industry. The consensus; the hurricane laid a path of destruction that has crippled almost every sector.
As one of her sons rode out the wrath of Hurricane Ida’s 170 mph winds on his shrimp boat at the dock of her seafood processing business in Dulac, Trudy Luke and her husband Timmy with the rest of the family worried what they would find when they returned home.
Hurricane Ida struck the heart of Louisiana’s seafood industry as a Category 4 hurricane, wiping out homes, boats, trucks, plants and icehouses. Oyster farmers on Grand Isle lost their entire crop, processing plants from Grand Isle to Dulac lay in ruin and almost 30% of the shrimping fleet in Golden Meadow lay useless at the start of current shrimp season. “If the Louisiana seafood industry is to have any life at all in the near future,” said Gulf Seafood Foundation board member Ewell Smith, “it is all about ice.”
DONATE NOW!!! Hurricane Ida has left a path of destruction through Louisiana, and in that path was seafood community after seafood community. Donate to the Gulf Seafood Foundation’ “Helping Hands” for Hurricane Ida.
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