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When Katrina hit and the first question of oil in fishing beds came up, I immediately packed my freezer with shrimp and resolved not to eat other shrimp. I ran out of shrimp a couple months ago and, so far, I've done without. I expect to for as long as I can.
I wish you guys in the Gulf area well and hope the planet can right itself with time. But I don't feel good about eating thing that eat from a petroleum soaked food chain.
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re: rainey
Degree in oceanography. The long hydrocarbon chains in natural oil breakdown with access to oxygen and microbes. The Gulf of Mexico has always had oil in the water due to natural seepage. It would be natural to assume that gulf species are better adapted to process and survive periodic increased oil densities as opposed to those in the Atlantic.
I think that I just gave somebody their Masters or Doctoral thesis.
I would have far greater concerns eating shrimp that has been 6 years in the freezer.
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re: rainey
You do realize that the Gulf Coast food chain had petroleum in it long before man? Among the amazing NATURAL features of the Gulf: concentrated brine & methane lakes on the bottom, asphalt volcanoes, and a whole slew of chemosynthetic bacteria, worms, and mussels adapted to those conditions. The oil seeps out of the ground naturally in some places.
I'm simply trying to point out that the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem has plenty of naturally occuring petroleum seepage, so it's been part of the food chain for a long, long time.
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Gulf Coast Restaurants
1200 S Clearview Pkwy, New Orleans, LA 70123 -
re: rainey
I would like to know where you bought these shrimp. It seems as though you are in Los Angeles, and if you bought them there you have know way of knowing where they came from, anywhere from, as I mentioned earlier, Florida to Mexico. Mexico had one of the largest oil spills in history in the Bay of Campeche, with most of it ending up in Texas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_...
We were cleaning oil off our feet for twenty years afterward, and I haven't quit eating shrimp, or the marvelous speckled trout and redfish I catch. By the way, suntan oil works great on tar balls on the feet.
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re: James Cristinian
WWII had many U-boat sinkings of tankers in the Gulf. Then, until EPA got strong, tankers of every seagoing nation cleaned their tanks and pumped the effluent overboard into the Gulf. Tarballs on Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and west were common up into the 80's.
And there are natural oil seeps from Long Beach to Santa Barbara.
This country and the world has for many decades been eating from a food chain that is not pristine.
Everyone has to set up their own risk/reward scale.
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re: collardman
"Everyone has to set up their own risk/reward scale."
Precisely. And if the original question is "are there reservations" my answer remains "yes". I am cavalier about things that give others pause but this is over the line of my comfort zone.
A wholesale pumping of raw petroleum into a contained body of water from April 20 to Sept 19 is different than "seepage" or occasional tanker leaks. To put it in perspective, in addition to 436K gallons of dispersants (yum!) added to the food chain, the estimates are that 35K-60K barrels a day (average over duration 53K per day) amounted to 4.9 million barrels of oil that fouled the Gulf of Mexico and became part of its new ecology.
I wish the fishermen down there well. But it's not something I choose to or have to eat anymore. I love shrimp and oysters but I have always lived without them the equivalent of 50 weeks out of 52 in a year and living without them altogether for the next decade or so seems like a much better idea to me personally. More for you! You guys enjoy it now. ;>
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re: rainey
To put some perspective of the amounts of contaminant in the gulf, the Gulf of Mexico has around 643,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water. That is 643 Quadrillion gallons. The Mississippi river pours in over 4.2 million gallons of water into the Gulf of Mexico every second. so 140.4 million gallons of oil and dispersant would be basically equal to the amount of water that flows from the Mississippi river into the Gulf of Mexico in 35 seconds and as a percentage of the total water in the gulf it would be less than 100 millionth of 1 percent of the total quantity in the gulf. Add to the fact that much of the oil and dispersant rises to the top and follows the currents, if you're talking about eating seafood from deep in the gulf, you are living with a totally negligible risk at this point.
Of course, if you're like a co-worker who refused a free trip to Aruba because she was still "haunted" by the fact that Natalie Holloway got kidnapped and killed there, then just lock yourself inside and eat organically grown food from your own indoor greenhouse.
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Due to the spill, Gulf Coast (and I mean Texas through Florida) seafood is probably the most closely monitored in the world, and the scientists aren't raising any alarm. This Florida resident eats it and is not worried.
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Gulf Coast Restaurants
1200 S Clearview Pkwy, New Orleans, LA 70123›3 Replies -
Panama Hat
Sep 5, 2011 04:11 AM
If you think of what has been coming down the MS River for the last 100 years and we have eaten the seafood without a problem, the BP oil spill is not worth mentioning.
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re: Panama Hat
drdelicious
Sep 6, 2011 08:31 AM
Kinda what I always said too.... I'm thinking the 'yellow fever' bodies thrown in the River would have been a deterrent long before the oil spill.... or the DDT... I've eaten it my whole life, and I'm fine. I will always support the Gulf Coast (even TX ;), so yes, it's fine to eat.
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Gulf Coast Restaurants
1200 S Clearview Pkwy, New Orleans, LA 70123
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If there is a problem the class action suit against almost every restaurant from Panama City to Lake Charles is going to be a doozy.
I have never stopped eating seafood and don't know any of my friends/family that have stopped.
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re: collardman
texasredtop
Sep 4, 2011 01:32 PM
I've heard a lot of people turn it down, even over here near Houston. I just say - good, more for me. I've never stopped eating it and doubt there would be anything that would cause me to stop eating it.
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re: texasredtop
I also live in Houston and this Gulf Coast question drives me crazy. People from outside the area seem to think the coast begins and ends in Louisiana. Guess what? Your Gulf Coast seafood is just as likely to come from anywhere from Florida, to Texas, or Mexico. If I knew the seafood was from Louisiana, I would still eat it.
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