Before the BP oil spill ravaged Louisiana’s marshlands, Randy Borne pulled in 70 dozen wire crates a day of squirming blue crabs. His traps dotted the swampy waters behind his house near Golden Meadow, a sprawling bayou town 80 miles south of New Orleans.
But five years after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history sent millions of gallons of crude spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, Borne says his crab catch has dwindled dramatically. Now, he usually lugs in only about 12 dozen crates’ worth of crabs each day.
“Every year is worse and worse. I'm hardly catching nothing,” he says in a thick Cajun accent from under the shade of his seafood shed. “I think the crabs got affected the most.”
Further down Louisiana Highway 1, to the point where land melts into the Gulf, popular beaches and fishing spots remain closed to visitors as restoration work continues. In Grand Isle, a beach town that suffered the brunt of the spill, thick globs of pudding-like oil still blanket the shores from time to time.
Across the Barataria Bay, in the tiny fishing village of Pointe a la Hache, a once-bustling marina has grown still after the flood of oil and cleanup efforts killed off most of the oyster reefs. Here, Brian Harvey runs Beshel’s Boat Launch, a supply shop that stocks snacks and soda upstairs and boat equipment down below. With the oysters gone, Harvey says he has half as many customers in a given month. “We used to have about 60 to 70 boats fishing here. Now it’s about 10 or 12 shrimping boats,” he says from behind the store counter.
