VENICE, La. -- Here at the Empire Marina, oyster fisherman Vetroslav Garbin has a sign on his boat that screams his complaint: “Commercial license since ’73 – No job BP.”
He's had a commercial fishing license since 1973. He says he's gone to just about every BP meeting and has applied for oil response work every time he could. But 100 days into the disaster, he says they haven't hired him.
“I don’t feel right because we have down here, people have been on the job since the very beginning, then because so many people like I am in same position, situation, and then they start rotating boats, and they start rotating boats every two weeks, and I didn’t get job,” Garbin said.
Garbin said he came her from Croatia in 1971 with a tourist visa and $20 in his pocket. Then he fell in love, got married, raised three children, and has worked the waters around here since he arrived.
He said he was always able to come back from hurricanes. But this oil spill has knocked him like nothing he's been through.
“The last about two and a half months, you know, I’m down, you know. The lease is closed. I’ve been on the shipyard,” Garbin said.
His friend and fellow oysterman, Kuzma Tesvich, hasn't been able to get work from BP either.
Neither of them can understand why.
“Some people been working for months non stop,” Tesvich said.
They say this oyster seasons is almost certainly lost, and the oil may have killed those too young to harvest. But the worst part of this for them is the uncertainty about the future. Garbin says it takes seed oysters three years to grow to full size.
“Our problem is we don’t know when oysters going to come back,” Garbin said. “It might be three years, it might be four or five or more.”
“All the other fisheries, commercial fisheries, they’re probably going to be opened up in the next few days I understand from all the sampling they’ve been doing,” Tesvich said. “But oysters, that’s the last one on the list, because they have to approve the harvesting waters for us to go to work.”
Meantime local political leaders are afraid BP may be scaling back its commitment to responding to the needs of people here.
“Well, we heard from some of the company making boom was making boom, they’ve been cut off. One of the caterers that was catering down here in Venice was told don’t come back here after the hurricane,” said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.
Nungesser said local leaders will meet with BP officials in what he describes as a “Come to Jesus” meeting. He said local leaders will question the apparent move to scale back oil response efforts and will be demanding a long term commitment to this region.
