Vessels of Opportunity

Photo by Brett VandenHeuvel

As we approached the bayou fishing village of Cocodrie, Louisiana, generations of boats of all kinds were moored in the canal – small skiffs, oyster boats, crabbers. On Tuesday, five team members took a boat from Cocodrie to witness the impacts of the BP oil disaster. Our captain, Tate, grew up in this town and knew every passageway through the marshgrass bayou. Tate took us through the canals to islands, some scarred by oil and some lined with white absorbent oil boom. Tate wanted to head out to the main channel where the Vessels of Opportunity were pulling boom.

On the way, Tate told me he worked as a shrimper for the last 20 years. Each year he takes his 53-foot trawler – solo, no crew – for 7-day trips to catch thousands of pounds of shrimp. Tate has no boss and sells ice-packed shrimp directly out of his house to customers he’s had for years. “They know I’ll get them a quality product,” he said.

The shrimp season opens on Monday, but Tate isn’t fishing. “It’s too uncertain.” He doesn’t know whether there are any shrimp to catch and if they are safe to eat due to all the oil and toxic dispersent. He wouldn’t sell contaminated food, and nobody wants it anyways. Those who have seen the oil are not eating the seafood. Even restaurants in New York and Chicago are reprinting menus to remove the term “Gulf Shrimp.”

Tate guides the boat around a marshy island and there we see them – the Vessels of Opportunity.  BP’s oil disaster is killing the Gulf Coast fishery, but BP is providing fishermen the opportunity to use the shrimp boats to clean up the oil. Tate nodded to friends. “That is a beautiful boat, the Darcy Lee.  She used to land a lot of shrimp.” Three men lean over the rail of the Darcy Lee and heave 50-foot sections of orange oil boom out of the water and stage it on the rear deck. Another man reaches out a gaff and pulls another oil boom toward the boat. Catching oil.

These men need income. And I’m glad BP is paying them. But it just doesn’t feel right that BP can destroy the fishery, destroy their livelihood and maybe their children’s dream of being a fishermen, and the only thing these guys can do is load their boats with oily boom.

Tate said he gets physically sick when he thinks about the impact of the oil and the dispersant on the bayou, but he doesn’t talk bad about BP. He mentioned his off-season work with the oil industry, taking surveyors into the bayou for pipeline construction or running supplies out to the drill rigs.  He’s getting some work now during the cleanup but isn’t sure how long it will last. He thinks the Vessels of Opportunity program is a good thing because the men need the work.

I asked Tate dozens of questions about oil drilling – there were wells and pipelines everywhere. Tate was knowledgeable, but his answers were disinterested. He kept returning to stories about shrimping and when we reached some good water, he threw out a small hand net to show us a couple. His eyes began to glow when he told me that each evening, after a long day of trawling, he’d set aside a handful of shrimp and a couple crabs and cook them on the back deck of the boat, alone at sunset in the bayou. “They’d never even see the ice,” he said.

A storm was supposed to blow in more oil tomorrow. We headed in. The other boats followed, returning to the BP dock with their boom. I asked Tate whether he thought he’d get to fish again. He didn’t answer. Over his shoulder, in the open water, huge drill rigs dotted the horizon.

By Brett VandenHeuvel

Vessels of Opportunity from Under Solen Media on Vimeo.