Gulf fisheries rebounding from BP spill, government says

Gulf of Mexico fisheries are rebounding from the BP Plc oil spill, landing more fish last year than in 2009, the year before the worst US offshore marine disaster, the government said. The total catch was 25 per cent bigger last year than in 2009, and 55 per cent more than in 2010, the National Marine Fisheries Service said today in a report. In April of that year, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and triggering a spill the government estimated at more than four million barrels.

“Our fisheries are on the way up,” Harlon Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, said in an interview. Some species are doing better than others, and the industry will “need another year or two of stabilisation” before it’s back completely, he said.

Dean Blanchard, chief executive officer of Dean Blanchard Seafood Inc, a shrimper based in Grand Isle, Louisiana, said the government statistics are misleading and fail to tell the tale of individual operations. Fishing operations are constrained by geography, because going greater distances to find fish raises transportation costs and eats profits, he said.

Bloomberg