Sea monsters and devoured jobs are sinking shrimp harvesters four years after the BP blowout

[KamaAina]

http://bellona.org/news/fossil-fuels/oil/2014-08-sea-monsters-devoured-jobs-sinking-shrimp-harvesters-four-years-bp-blowout

The “creepy-crawlies” Blanchard referred to on the phone are the ever-rising rash of horrifically mutated shrimp, crabs and other sea life covered with oozing growths and extra limbs, shrimp and crabs lacking eyes and eye sockets, and fish of all manner swollen with apparent tumors.

Penick said the mutated shrimp can be easily spotted in the sorting process, but said that plenty actually make it through seafood distributors to market. The malformations would not be noticeable in most US supermarket seafood chests because the heads and outer shells are most often discarded. But that presents no guarantee that whatever carcinogens caused the horrific malformations are not making it into the human food supply....

Because the federal government closed down a two-month-old fishing season after the BP blowout in 2010, 2011’s shrimp crop was even more robust as fishermen cashed in on leftovers they weren’t allowed to trawl the previous year – a statistic BP and the Federal government touted as a banner of Gulf recovery....

“It took about five years for the Exxon Valdez spill to kill fishing off in Prince Island Sound (Prince William Sound -Ed.), and that’s pretty much where we’re heading,” he said. “I’m trying to keep it standing, trying to keep a good face on it, but it ain’t gonna last – it’s probably adios.”

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. I haven't eaten shrimp since BP.

And rarely even any fish. Seafood is just too often mislabeled for me to even feel safe that what I might buy is from some 'safer' part of the world. (And with the revelations about slave labour on Thai shrimpers, iirc, I'm even less-inclined to contribute to evil crap going on in the world.)