From "dead zones" to climate change, restoring Louisiana's fishing industry sees many hurdles
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [National Geographic] by Meg Wilcox - October 22, 2014
The Croatian Pride pushes off the dock and cuts slowly through the grey Gulf of Mexico, its engine growling. The air hangs thick and steamy, and the movement of the 40-foot oyster boat brings relief as it breezes past marshy areas where blue herons stand sentinel. The boat’s captain, John Tesvich, is a fourth generation oysterman, but on this early fall day, it’s journalists, not oysters, that he’s hauling.
Reporters are on board the Croatian Pride to learn about Louisiana’s $50 billion plan to restore the state’s rapidly vanishing coastline, a crisis the New York Times Magazine termed “existential,” and the impact those plans will have on Louisiana’s legendary oyster fishery. The discussion jumps, however, from coastal restoration, to the lingering impacts of the Deep Water Horizon spill, to Hurricane Katrina, and finally the Gulf’s “dead zone,” a huge swath of ocean the size of Connecticut that forms every summer and is essentially devoid of life...
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