Boats moored by the BP oil spill, a long-threatened community of black fishers fears for its future
Headed down La. 39 on the east bank of Plaquemines Parish, a few miles down after the Belle Chasse Ferry, drivers pass a tall, white picket fence on the left with a sign that reads “Welcome White Ditch” in a circle around an outline of the state with a pelican inside. A few yards ahead, to the right are two rusting red pipes connected to the Mississippi River which dip below the highway and then surface on the left to flush river water into a fenced-off canal that leads to acres of marsh and bayou.
This is the White’s Ditch Siphon. But to some in the area, it is a division marker. From this point south are predominantly African-American communities such as Phoenix, Davant and Pointe a la Hache. The communities north of this mark are mostly white.
But also what lies south of this point are communities that for decades kept themselves alive through oyster harvesting and shrimp trawling. The history of this small, historically black community of fishermen and women stretches back to the early 20th century. That legacy continues today, though somewhat diluted over the past 40 years as some younger residents traded a living on the water for jobs in the energy industry. What’s left of that proud maritime heritage, though, is being threatened by the catastrophic BP oil disaster, which could choke the life out of the bays and shores on which the communities depend.
Ironically, one approach to keeping the oil away could itself finish off the black fishing community here.
State officials have opened Mississippi River diversions, such as the White’s Ditch Siphon, hoping that a strong outward flow of water will keep the oil out of the bayou and marsh where it could persist for decades, and ruin the already brittle wetlands . But emptying that much fresh water into the oyster beds throws off the delicate salinity balance the bivalves need to survive.
When the White’s Ditch Siphon was installed in 1963, it destroyed most of the oyster beds owned by African Americans, said Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oysterman Association. Encalade says he had close to 1,500 acres of oyster beds before the White Ditch intrusion and now has about 200 acres. At peak, blacks owned almost 10,000 acres collectively, but now maybe 1,500, he said.
The state might open another diversion in the Bohemia Spillway, a couple of miles south of White’s Ditch. If reopened now, it would throw another flow of freshwater into the brackish habitat Encalade’s oystermen depend on. That will hurt, says Neal Beshel, who runs the marina office at Point a la Hache. “You need a little fresh water introduced out there, but if you get too much out there it’ll hurt the oysters,” he said. “I’m against it.”
Encalade was more direct: “That will wipe us out.Our community will not have any black-owned oyster leases left. It will finish us off.”
Despite this threat to their livelihoods, African Americans here say they are being overlooked by BP as the oil giant looks to hire locals for cleanup work.
At the Pointe a la Hache boat harbor, behind the marina’s office, five African-American men gather over a pile of crabs, picking them up, sizing them and tossing them in boxes. All of them attended the BP “Vessels of Opportunity” job training held in their community, but none of them got work from it. One of them, Orin Bentley, sweating profusely under a straw hat and pulling crabs with thick hands scarred like hacked wood, said they likely won’t either.
“They ain’t calling us back,” Bentley said. “They ain’t hiring nobody from East Bank. We losing everything – losing our business, losing our money and losing our minds.”
There are no hard numbers on the demographics of the people hired by BP. A look at the legal form for participants in Vessels of Opportunity program shows inquiries into the make, model, vessel capacity, and fuel capacity of the boat being used, but no questions about the race, gender or even date of birth of the trainee. Patrick Kelley, a data collector for the U.S. Coast Guard, said that while the petrochemical giant has no other method to track those employed, they have developed an informal approach to demographics: checking the spelling of the names on the agreements. Using that method, he estimates that about 200 Vietnamese or Cambodian fishers have gotten jobs, about a third of a total of about 600 hires, he said. This number represents less than18 percent of the total 3,200 people who have attended trainings and received certification to work in the cleanup.
Activists and advocates say that without this information, government has no way of ensuring that BP is hiring fairly. Last week, Rev. Tyrone Edwards, an African-American activist out of Phoenix, a small black town near Pointe a La Hache, brought that message to Capitol Hill. Traveling with the Equity and Inclusion Campaign and Oxfam America, Edwards met with California Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters about making sure that blacks and other minorities are not left out of cleanup employment opportunities. Waters is expected to hold hearings about this issue this week.
“We know who’s been absent from the table was black fishermen,” Edwards said. “Not only were the black ones not there, but you had all the guys owning large vessels, and the large vendors who were at the table. So I said we’ve got to be more involved in this process. Right now BP needs to be saying, ‘We are paying you this money because your water bottoms are closed.’ They have the responsibility to pay us while we are not working, especially the fishermen on the east bank”
Rev. Edwards isn’t himself a fisher, but has a long history of advocating on their behalf, dating back to 1979 when he helped form The Fishermen and Concerned Citizens of Plaquemines Parish. He led that organization in a successful fight to overturn a law banning the use of a small hand dredges, often used by small commercial black fishers. They also fought for better wages and better work protection for black crewmembers, while also helping black fishers with boat ownership.
These days, Rev. Edwards heads the Zion Travelers Cooperative Center, which has led post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in southeast Plaquemines — much of which was flattened by storm surges. He’s also been working with Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser on a plan to have BP come accommodate some of the overlooked fishers. Nungesser says that so far BP has agreed to set up a place on the east bank where fishers can receive assistance with the claims process or sign up for hazardous materials clean-up training if needed.
It will be a “place where I can put some of my people there becasue I think [BP is] bullshitting them,” said Nungesser. “They are not helping them express their true losses. Some of those fisherman in east bank aren’t educated and some are intimidated but they are hardworking people. So we need something so that when they come in it won’t feel like them against BP.”
One local person who’s future is in jeopardy is a man who doesn’t fish himself, but has been making a living off selling large Gulf shrimp off the back of his truck in New Orleans. Keilen Williams, the 34-year-old “New Orleans Shrimp Man”, comes from four generations of oystermen and shrimpers. He once shrimped, but now calls himself an “advocate for shrimpers,” much in the way that Encalade is an advocate for oystermen.
“I’m connected to so many fishers that I didn’t have to fish no more,” Williams said. “They need a voice. They needed me to get this together, this black representation for them because we feel like we are losing our heritage.”
Williams has been writing to city council members and talking with local media, such as WBOK morning show host Gerod Stevens, about how black fishers in southeast Plaquemines have not received the protection and assistance other communities have. This is important to New Orleanians in particular because much of the oysters and shrimp they eat at restaurants come from black fishers in Pointe a La Hache.
Every day, the Pointe a la Hache marina is paid a visit by Rodney Fox, owner of R&A Oyster Co., who collects thousands of coffebean sacks of oysters – each containing 100 to 150 oysters in them – from black, and increasingly Mexican, oystermen. Fox purchases them for about $25 a sack, and then sells them to restaurants and markets throughout the state and country.
Williams is trying to duplicate the same success in New Orleans. When not advocating, Williams is working to establish a fresh seafood and vegetable market in the city. There, he would sell shrimp, oysters and fish at low prices thanks to his relationships with the black fishers in Plaquemines. Already, he’s registered with the state as “New Orleans Shrimpman LLC” and pursued grants from the city to help get the business off the ground.
All of that is put on hold now, though, due to the oil spill.
“Consumers will be skeptical about buying shrimp now,” Williams said. “They opened shrimp season early, when they weren’t the size they were supposed to be yet.”
In previous years, Williams was able to earn about $100,000 a year selling shrimp from Pointe a la Hache in New Orleans, tax returns show. He was hoping this year to ink contracts with big-time suppliers such as Costco and Wal-Mart. That would have tripled his income, he says, but instead it feels more like a distant dream with every passing day of oil and riverwater seeping into the marsh and boats remaining tied up.
“This is all I know, water and seafood,” Williams said. “It feels like I’m losing my heritage. If I don’t do this — black people already have been stripped of their identity. This will finish us.”
photos by Shawn Escoffery
BP oil spill threatens a Lafourche oysterman's way of life
By Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune
May 30, 2010, 10:00AM
The Collins oyster family in Golden Meadow, from left: Wilbert Sr., Tracy, Nick, Levy lll and Levy lV in front of the Wilbert Jean wooden oyster boat, which was named after Wilbert and the middle name of his sister.On Tuesday, May 18, two days before oil entered Caminada Bay, threatening to poison the water where the Collins family has been harvesting prized Louisiana oysters for five generations, Nick and Levy Collins III were driving toward their docked boat in Grand Isle, cataloging the sundry factors that imperiled their livelihood.
Spilled oil did not top the list.
"I'm more worried about the dispersants," Nick Collins said, referring to Corexit, the chemical the Environmental Protection Agency would soon order BP to cease spraying in its efforts to break up the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the fatal Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion on April 20.
Nick, who's 38, and Levy, 51, wore rough, days-old beards, aerodynamic sunglasses and brown-stained jeans and T-shirts. Both have been oystering since before they were allowed to legally drive. Levy's son, Levy IV, has been at it for nearly a decade. He's 26.
The radio in the cab of Nick's Ford F-350 pick-up transmitted updated estimates of the amount of unchecked oil polluting the Gulf. But Nick voiced louder concerns for the diverted Mississippi River water pushing the spill offshore.
"Too much fresh water, too much salt water, it kills these oysters," Nick explained with an exhale of cigarette smoke. It's a painful lesson he relearns every time a hurricane violently churns Louisiana's coastal waters -- an all-too frequent occurrence in recent years.
But even if the oysters survived the diversions, the salinity of Caminada Bay's water could be altered in a way that diminishes the quality of an oyster that once compelled Andre Soltner, chef-proprietor of the legendary Manhattan French restaurant Lutece, to call Nick's father Wilbert at his home in Golden Meadow to tell him, "That's the best oyster I've ever had."
That was three decades ago. The intervening years have seen yields reduced to the point where oystermen living along Bayou Lafourche have become an endangered species themselves. The family perseveres in large part because they believe the oysters they cultivate on their reefs near the island of Cheniere Caminada -- namesake of the Cheniere Caminada Hurricane that killed an estimated 2,000 people in 1893 -- remain worthy of hassle and heartbreak.
"Don't get me wrong, you can get great oysters out of Grand Lake, Snail Bay, Bayou Saint Denis," Nick said, referencing some of the other areas he works along with the Collins Oyster Co.'s eight or so employees, most of them close relatives. "But they don't taste as good as these."
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On Friday, May 14, Wilbert Collins stood in the living room of his split-level brick house in Golden Meadow, holding a photograph of a boat so overloaded with oysters it appeared on the verge of sinking.
"We can't do that no more," he said of the large haul. "Not enough oysters."
The photo dates to the beginning of Collins' professional life in the 1940s or '50s, an era in which he still seems firmly rooted, provided you ignore the cell phone causing the breast pocket of his work shirt to hang near the midsection of his rail-thin frame.
At 72, Wilbert is still, as his son Nick has it, known to "give it hell" out on the water, but these days he does so with less frequency than years past. Where the Collins Oyster Co. once sent 18 wheelers filled with oysters to a distributor in Houma and, later, the P&J Oyster Company in New Orleans, the lion's share of its business today is conducted retail from a small converted house along Highway 1 in Golden Meadow.
The building sits just behind Wilbert's private residence, where on May 14 he fielded calls from customers hungry to buy. The Collins' leases in Caminada Bay, which they've held since the 1930s, are located within oyster harvesting Area 13. The area was officially open to commercial and recreational fishermen (it has since been closed), but the family's concern about the purity of the water made them leery of putting any of their three boats to work.
To a customer who called on May 14 inquiring about a sack, Wilbert said, "We're not shut down. We're just not fishing till next week."
The most frequent caller was Bryan R. Bourque, owner of Black's Seafood Market, the Abbeville-based seafood distributor that is the Collins' lone commercial client.
"He called me three times yesterday and once this morning," Collins cracked, "but the day's still young."
The business relationship dates to the 1970s, when Bourque's father Black noticed something about the oysters coming into Black's Seafood Restaurant in Abbeville.
"We had an oyster person who dropped oysters off," Bryan Bourque explained. "On the tags of those oysters they put the name of the person they got the oysters from, and when the tag said 'Collins,' they were always the best oyster."
Black Bourque made Collins the sole provider of oysters to his restaurant. When Bryan sold the restaurant in 2006 (new owners closed it permanently in 2009), the same exclusive arrangement carried over to his seafood market.
"Just with us and our families and the people we employ, it might not seem like very much," Nick said of his family's compact empire. "But if we have to stop, you're affecting 40 lives right there. And that's not counting the people who eat the oysters."
While the number of people who consume the Collins' product has declined, the quality, according to people who have eaten them for years, has not.
Al Sunseri, co-owner and president of P&J, calls Collins' Caminada Bay oysters "the epitome of what an oyster is." Tidal currents that pass over the family's leases carry an ideal mixture of salt and fresh water that filters through the oysters and strengthens their flesh, resulting in firmer, saltier meat.
"They're like a lot of the oysters we used to have in Bayou Cook, Grand Bayou, Grand Lake -- the oysters that put P&J on the map," Sunseri said. "It's not that they just have this salt flavor, but they have this oyster flavor. We just don't see that that much anymore."
The most prized oysters on Collins' Caminada reefs this season were harvested in the fall from public grounds in Black Bay and from their private leases in Snail Bay. They were replanted in Caminada, where the nutrient-rich waters work like a naturally occurring marinade as the oysters reach plump adulthood. The cultivation process is the molluskian corollary to a rancher feeding corn to cattle in the weeks leading up to slaughter. It is also laborious, and it exposes the oysters to an ecosystem swarming with predators who appreciate the oysters as much as the Collins' paying customers.
"You've got the drum fish. You got the snails. And you got the thieves," Nick said, ticking off just a few of the reasons his business would flabbergast an efficiency expert. "You got a lot chewing on your profits that is not labor, equipment or fuel."
"Nobody wants to plant oysters anymore," Wilbert said.
The family's efforts fuel a small business whose real value may be in the validation it brings. During the holidays, Wilbert said traffic cops are sometimes necessary to manage the flow of cars that bottleneck Highway 1 leading up to the store. Levy tells stories about friendly neighbors coming to fisticuffs when the stock runs low.
"You've got guys complaining about four sacks to guys who didn't get any," Nick said. "BP can't put a price on our oysters."
The bulk of the final load Nick and Levy pulled out of Caminada before the oil came in went to Shuck's seafood house in Abbeville, a town that fancies itself the Oyster Capital of Acadiana. Shuck's serves nothing but Collins oysters on the half-shell, which amounts to upwards of 600 sacks a month, according to co-owner David Bertrand.
On Saturday, they were sweet and juicy, if a shade less salty for having been harvested after the diverted fresh water had filtered through them. But their toned, muscular flesh only added to the sensation of eating something fully alive.
"We serve them, because we think they're the best in Louisiana," Bertrand said of Collins' product. "If I have to go to Texas to get oysters next week, then I guess that's what we'll have to do."
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Back on May 18, Nick steered the Broad & Tracy, the newest vessel in his family's three-boat fleet, toward an oyster lease marked by white PVC pipe. The 57-foot boat was built in 1993, before the first of its namesakes -- the brothers' grandfather Levy "Broad" Collins Jr. -- died, and its second -- Nick and Levy's brother Tracy -- left oystering to work for his father-in-law in the oil business.
"It cost a pretty penny, but it's a strong boat," Nick explained, pointing out that the hull is made of thick fiberglass. "It's going to last longer than we are."
Today's plan was not to harvest oysters for sale but to personally survey the conditions; dredge enough oysters to bring a sack or two home for personal consumption and empty traps set for oyster drill snails, a problematic predator but also a delicacy locals call "bigarno."
In choosing not to dredge with abandon while the waters remained open to fishing, the Collinses were exercising caution but also hoping that the spill wouldn't enter the bay.
"We could go out and fill up the boat," Nick explained. "But then we wouldn't have anything left to fish in the fall."
Staring out over the water, Nick was encouraged by what he saw: "It's kind of green, kind of clear. I don't really see any ugliness to it with oil or anything."
As the Broad & Tracy approached the first lease, Levi leaned over the boat's side with a long metal hook to pull up a repurposed crab trap connected by rope to a buoy fashioned out of a plastic laundry detergent bottle. The trap was baited with an oyster the snails had sucked clean of meat. Levi shook the trap until everything in it -- not just snails but blue crabs, baby shrimp and flounder, hermit crabs and clams -- was spread on the boat's pine deck.
The snapshot of the marine life below caused Nick to muster a rare, prideful smile. "You can catch all sorts of saltwater aquatic out here," he said.
The brothers turned their attention to oysters in mid-afternoon. The dredger is an industrial-strength rake that approximates the incisors of a carnivorous dinosaur. The clatter of rusty chain and hard shells hitting metal announced the arrival of the first batch, from which Levi pulled a handful of the oysters first harvested from Black Bay. He shucked one for each person on board.
The sun had warmed the oyster's meat, relaxing the flesh, which tasted of clean ocean water. Levy's assessment: "Not overly salty. I don't taste any oil. I can't taste any dispersant, but I don't know what it tastes like."
The sense of relief was interrupted when Nick stopped the boat en route to another lease. The water surrounding the Broad & Tracy was tinted red.
"That's not good," Nick said. "Now I got to call someone big and tell them they're crazy to have this open."
When he emerged from the cabin a few minutes later he was no less concerned, despite the fact that an LSU professor had assured him the water was discolored by an algae likely caused by the rising levels of fresh water.
"He's acting like it's a common thing," Nick said. "I never seen it in my life."
Nick's mood darkened to the point where he started to think aloud about the oil that had yet to arrive. Oil that in two days would close the bay to fishing.
"Personally, if it comes inside (Caminada Bay), I'm moving to Canada to fish halibut," he said. "I like to oyster, but if I can't have this oyster, it doesn't make no sense to oyster anymore."
Nick returned to the cabin and pointed the Broad & Tracy in the direction of more traps. Levi spent the remainder of the afternoon pulling them in, creating a growing heap of snails on the boat's deck. In the time it took to get from one trap to the next, Levi culled the pile of bycatch, throwing it all -- the hermit crabs, the blue crabs, the stone crabs, the spade fish, the baby shrimp, the flounder and the rest of it -- over the side, back into the unknown.
Brett Anderson can be reached at banderson@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3353. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BrettAndersonTP.>
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