While the oyster harvest east of the Mississippi River has dropped precipitously in the years since the BP oil spill and an influx of fresh water from several Mississippi River diversions, white shrimp and blue crab fared much better there.
The oil spill in 2010, followed by the river diversions to fight the flow of the oil and the opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway in 2011 due to flooding concerns, were likely large factors in successive poor oyster harvests, scientists and fishermen say. But not so for white shrimp and blue crabs, which typically survive better than oysters and brown shrimp in fresher water.
Shrimpers in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin, the area east of the river, hauled in 4.8 million pounds of white shrimp in 2012, a 44-percent increase over the annual average from 2002-2009, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries data show. While white shrimp had dropped in 2011, the total 2011 and 2012 catch still places them about 5 percent above the pre-spill average.
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