I felt extraordinarily guilty all of the sudden while eating my shrimp fried rice from the neighborhood teriyaki joint. I got to thinking about all of the shrimp fisherman living near the Gulf of Mexico waiting for the BP oil spill situation to be resolved.
The leak still hasn’t been plugged. BP is pointing fingers in Congressional hearings. The President is angry. We’re all angry. How can you design an oil rig without a fail safe? Did you not have a plan that covered worse case scenarios? Who is evaluating this equipment and granting permission to drill? How many more disasters is it going to take before we start truly evaluating and integrating more alternative energy options? Did you see the size of this oil spill in comparison to your city? Can we get this leak plugged already!?!? The list goes on…
It’s easy to be angry. But, we’re lucky. We didn’t just lose our livelihoods in a U.S. industry that’s been teetering on the brink for years. This is a final blow for many fisherman with small companies along the Gulf Coast who have been seeing the cost of shrimp driven down for years thanks to cheap seafood imported from abroad. The sad thing is, thanks to the imported substitutes, most Americans probably won’t even realize the plight of these fisherman at all. They’ll notice a slight uptick in prices, but they’ll get their shrimp from somewhere.
In the United States, the Gulf produces 73% of our domestic shrimp and 59% of our domestic oysters, according to a USA Today article. Many fisherman have been forced to just call it quits for the year, because there’s nowhere left that’s suitable for fishing. This is a disaster that affects our economy, our ecosystem, and any trust we had in many big businesses.
So, what am I going to do? Starting today: I’m boycotting BP. I’m only eating U.S. produced shrimp. If that means paying significantly more, I’ll pay or go without.
And, don’t forget to let your representatives in Congress know that it’s unacceptable to let BP off the hook. A lot of people are expecting a check in the mail for damages.
