Captain Michael Nguyen stands on his fishing boat in Venice, La., yesterday. Local fishermen are worried about how their industry will withstand a growing oil spill that resulted from last week's explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana.Patrick Semansky/The Associated Press
Mike Voisin has seen disasters blow in from the Gulf of Mexico before, but never like this, in slow motion, with a rainbow-coloured sheen of emulsified crude oil creeping toward shore or shifting away, depending on the wind.
When it hits land the slick is expected to foul oyster leases, crabbing grounds, and shrimp beds while polluting nesting areas where hundreds of thousands of water birds are settled.
"We have been preparing and planning for a week now and hoping and praying it would not occur, that it would not have any shore impacts … but it looks like it's coming in," Mr. Voisin said from New Orleans Thursday night, where he was tracking the latest news from last week's BP oil rig explosion.
The oil gushing from an underwater wellhead had spread over 7,000 square kilometres by yesterday and its leading edge was reaching like a tentacle toward the tip of the Mississippi River delta.
It is there in a lattice work of bayous and along coastal beaches that the United States harvests a wealth of oysters, blue crabs and shrimp.
The rich delta, home to several wildlife refuges, also contains extensive bird nesting areas.
Mr. Voisin, CEO of Motivatit Seafoods Inc., a leading oyster producer, said people are bracing for the impact of the oil spill.
"Oysters and shrimp are a big concern. Shrimp are in the estuaries now and will start heading out soon … and oysters are in a reproductive period," Mr. Voisin said.
He said the United States gets one third of its seafood harvest from the Louisiana coast, where the oil is expected to make first contact.
"The impact could be mild if we get that source [of the leak]stopped - or it could be catastrophic. Catastrophic would be if it doesn't come under control soon," said Mr. Voisin, who learned yesterday the amount of oil flowing from the ruptured wellhead is five times original estimates - or up to 5,000 barrels a day.
"I woke up this morning and thought if it's not one thing, it's two," he said with a sigh. "I would say we're looking at something much larger than anything we've ever had to deal with."
But Mr. Voisin expressed confidence the Gulf Coast will bounce back from this disaster, just as it did from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Gustav in 2008.
"We are a resilient bunch of people and we have dealt with many hardships and we will deal with this hardship," he said. "There's a great quote: 'It's not necessarily the storms in life that mean something, but whether or not you can bring the ship in.' That's what we have to do … we'll figure it out."
Michael Fry, director of conservation advocacy for American Bird Conservancy, said the magnitude of the problem appears to beyond the abilities of the best efforts to contain it.
"To boom off the Mississippi delta is very difficult … as the wind shifts and pushes that oil in to shore they are just going to have to respond as best they can. But I don't think there's anything they've been able to do so far to stop it," he said.
"The logistics may be as difficult as during the Exxon Valdez spill [in Alaska in 1989]" said Dr. Fry, who is worried hundreds of thousands of birds could be at risk.
"There's no coastal road ... these marshes and bayous are very torturous passages," he said.
"All the water birds in there will be at risk … potentially hundreds of thousands of birds will get oiled from this incident."
He said 35,000 birds died from the Exxon Valdez spill and an estimated 300,000 were affected.
Dr. Fry said in addition to concerns about nesting shore and water birds, there are also millions of song birds now migrating across the Gulf of Mexico.
When they reach the United States, he said, they will land along the Gulf Coast to feed.
In the town of Venice, on the Mississippi delta, Captain Josh Howard, of Deep South Charters, said fishermen are watching the wind anxiously to see where it blows the oil slick.
"We're all concerned. That's our livelihood we're dealing with out there," he said. "We'll have to wait and see what happens."