Erik Niel’s restaurant goes through about 100 pounds of shrimp and 25 cases of oysters from the Gulf Coast weekly, an amount he expects will be affected by the ongoing oil spill off the Louisiana coast.
“I think it’s a similar scenario as when Katrina struck,” said Mr. Niel, chef and owner of Easy Bistro and Bar in downtown Chattanooga. “All of the supplies shifted to Texas and West Louisiana and we had some orders of oysters that weren’t filled, and I imagine it’s going to be the same thing that’s going to happen here.”
But Mr. Niel, a Louisiana native, thinks the spill may have longer-lasting effects.
“The difference is that there was an end after Katrina,” said Mr. Niel, a native of Louisiana. “It was obviously devastating to many people and many lives, but oil doesn’t just go away. Once it’s in the oyster beds, in the estuaries, what happens to it? I don’t know how you clean it up.”
It is estimated that at least 200,000 gallons a day of oil are spilling out of the mile-deep oil well since the blast at the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20. The spill now is being described as possibly the nation’s worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, shrimp, oysters and other marine life, according to The Associated Press.