The Louisiana & Maryland Crab Connection

For all those who believe the propaganda from BP - that the oil is gone and all is well in the Gulf - and besides, it's their problem, not yours.  Read on. From the Times Picayune:

Bayou La Batre, Ala. -- Terry Drawdy is no stranger to trouble. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina's massive storm surge engulfed this fishing village near the Mississippi-Alabama border, destroying the offices and processing facility of Drawdy's Crab Co. But Drawdy contends that the spring and summer of 2010 were harder than the summer and fall of 2005.
Before the BP oil spill, Drawdy said nearly 100 percent of the crabs processed at his Alabama plant came from Louisiana waters.

The volume of crabs he sold in eastern Maryland's lucrative market compelled him to partner with a Baltimore area restaurateur, John Ernst, to unload excess cargo. They bought Handsome Crab & Seafood Carry Out south of Baltimore last November; they added United Crab & Seafood in Gwynn Oak, Md., in April, "just before the frickin' oil spill," as Ernst puts it.
"That's how good my business was," Drawdy said. "I opened two businesses within six months of each other, blowing and going, and we've already had to shut one of them (Handsome) down."
Drawdy was standing with Robert Sprinkler, Drawdy's Crab Co.'s manager, outside the processing facility that has been idle since late June. There hasn't been much activity at all at the plants and docks that line the harbor near Drawdy's in Bayou La Batre, which calls itself "The Seafood Capital of Alabama." The men still oversee a small seafood shipping operation, but most of the loads are disappointingly small.
"We went from running two to three trucks a day to Baltimore to running two to three trucks a week," Sprinkler said. "When you send out as much seafood as we send out, it affects people everywhere. The fingers go way up across the country."
While Drawdy still buys Louisiana crabs, these days most of his product comes from Mexico and Texas. He'll continue to send shipments to Maryland even if it means taking a loss.
"You can't keep customers if you don't have the product," he said.

And of course, no one wants to buy crabs now that come in containers labeled as 'product of Louisiana Gulf Coast' anyway. The disturbing story is HERE.

h/t Editilla

And so it goes.
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