Experts Reassure Public of Seafood Safety As Gulf of Mexico Partially Reopens to Fishing
July 27, 2010 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has done monumental damage to the ecosystems of the region, which will likely take years to be fully restored, but in small ways a recovery has already begun.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reopened 26,388 square miles of Gulf waters to commercial and recreational fishing.
This map is a detailed part of a Map of the World published by Planet Poster Editions in Germany.
At its closet point, the area that has been reopened is about 190 miles southeast of the Deepwater/BP wellhead, and the area where the majority of fishing will occur is about 220 miles from the wellhead, along the west Florida shelf.
NOAA said that its data has “shown no oil in the area, and the United States Coast Guard observers flying over the area in the last 30 days have also not observed any oil.”
Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tried to reassure the public with a statement, saying, “We know it is important to get people back to fishing quickly - this industry is the backbone of the Gulf region economy.
“At the same time, we need the American public to be confident in the seafood coming from the Gulf, and the testing that has been done - as part of the agreed upon protocols - has not indicated any level of concern.”
Gary Graham with a mahi mahi. Photo from Jerry LaBella.
Between June 23 and July 5, NOAA collected fish for testing, including grouper, snapper, tuna, and mahi mahi from the area where the heaviest fishing will be taking place. The agency said that testing “showed no detectable oil or dispersant odors or flavors, and the results of chemical analysis were well below the levels of concern.”
Beyond the safe fishing waters, the closed area now represents 83,927 square miles of sea, which is about 35 percent of the Gulf’s federal waters. Earlier this month, a shrimp trawler received a “$15,000 penalty for fishing in the portion of the Gulf of Mexico closed due to the BP oil spill,” according to a report from NOAA.
President Barack Obama gave a speech in the White House Rose Garden, where he commented about holding the oil company accountable, saying, “We are obviously going to be taking measures about how much oil has spilled and those are calculations that are going to be continually refined.
“BP is going to be paying for the damage that it has caused, and that’s going to involve not only paying for the environmental disaster and cleanup, but also compensating people who’ve been affected.”
BP says that it has been capturing and collecting an average of 8,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil in recent weeks. To date, the company reports that its contaminant system has collected a total volume of oil that is a little over 826,800 barrels.
In addition, the company says that a total of 408 controlled burns have been carried out, removing an estimated 262,000 barrels of oil (11 million gallons) from the sea’s surface.
As far as compensation to parties economically injured by the spill, BP says that, “More than 32,000 claimants have received one or more payments in the past 10 weeks. The largest groups include: fisherman, who have received $32 million, and shrimpers, who have received $18 million, In addition, about $77 million has been paid for loss of income to a variety of occupations including: deckhands and employees of seafood processing plants and other businesses.”
The oil company adds that “in all, 114,000 claims have been submitted, but more than 61,000 claims lack enough information for BP to make a payment, or claimants have been unreachable after filing.”
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