State reopens Eastbank areas !

[perchjerker]

Louisiana reopens fishing in most east bank areas

By Bob Marshall, The Times-Picayune

May 14, 2010, 9:06PM


The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries late Friday announced east bank marshes that had been closed to all fishing since April 30 due to the BP oil disaster would be reopened at sunrise Saturday.
The move means all coastal waters and interior marshes in southeastern Louisiana are open except:

• Breton and Chandeleur sounds;
• Portions of the Mississippi River delta south of Baptiste Collette Pass on the east side and south of Red Pass on the west side;
• The southern most portions of Timbalier and Terrebonne bays, their barrier islands and the state's three-mile coastal waters in that area.

DWF Secretary Robert Barham said his agency had closed fishing areas on the advice of state health and environmental officials any time NOAA forecasters predicted those areas were in the imminent path of the giant spill.
Department of Heath and Hospital officials said closings in advance of the spill are necessary to protect both human health and the seafood industry because of a five-day lag time between sample collections and lab results. If closings were ordered only after a positive result, contaminated seafood could have been consumed for four days, they said.
The east bank closures had been in place for two weeks even the area was never hit with oil sheens or solid oil, and seafood and water samplings never detected any contamination from the spill. East bank fishers had watched with growing frustration as west bank marshes that had also been closed were re-opened when spill projections did not materialize.
Barham urged fishers to keep abreast of the latest news on the spill and future closings. One problem, he said, is the presence of dispersant chemicals that for several days BP had been injecting at the source of the blow-out, 5,000 feet below the surface. Dispersants are used to break up oil slicks to allow sun, wind and micro-organisms to begin degrading the oil. Most dispersants contain highly toxic chemicals and cannot be used in shallow water.
BP began the sub-surface applications last week, but was stopped after state agencies complained and asked for NOAA to study its environmental impacts. A decision is expected in the next few days.
"Those chemicals are extremely toxic, and what the experts we have consulted have told us is that they can enter the whole food chain just by getting into the (bait species) the other fish feed on," Barham said.
"We know those chemicals are in the water column (in the Gulf). We know tar balls have washed up on some beaches where there were no surface slicks.
"So now we have to develop testing protocol for those things in the interior marshes, too."