March 29, 2014 — Not that there’s ever a good time or place for an oil spill, but from the perspective of the Gulf shrimping industry, the timing and location of the March 22 spill in the Houston Ship Channel was unfortunate.
That’s because the bay system where the channel is located is basically a nursery where baby shrimp head this time of year to put on some size before swimming back into the Gulf and trawlers’ nets.
That’s not to say that local shrimpers, who fish up and down the Texas Gulf Coast including Galveston Bay, will be catching and offloading contaminated shrimp, since the oil does not appear to be sinking and no dispersant is being used.
It is possible that shrimp populations will be diminished as a result, however, which in turn would affect production.
The spill dumped nearly 170,000 gallons of crude into the busy channel after the barge carrying it was struck by a ship. The channel reopened all lanes of the channel on March 26.
Andrea Hance, the Brownsville-based executive director of the Texas Shrimp Association, said she reached out to multiple experts to try to get a handle on the consequences of the spill, if any, for Gulf shrimpers, including the local fleet.
Read the full story at the Valley Morning Star