Doug Mouton / Northshore Bureau Chief
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Hundreds of angry shrimpers rallied on the steps of the State Capitol Wednesday morning.
The focus of their anger: Ken Feinberg and BP.
"Our livelihoods are at stake," Acy Cooper told the gathered crowd. Cooper is the vice president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, the organization that organized Wednesday's rally. "None of us are going to make it through the winter time if we keep getting these prices. None of us."
The problem outlined at the rally was the price of shrimp. Shrimpers said price was not a problem before the BP Oil Spill.
"Our prices were soaring," Grand Isle Shrimper Dean Blanchard told the crowd. "In November and December of '09, and they continued into 2010, and we had everything going for us."
Then shrimpers say the spill happened, which tainted national perception and killed the price of shrimp.
They argued BP should now pay for the loss it caused.
"When there's an event that causes you to suffer and to experience economic injury," Louisiana Shrimp Association President Clint Guidry said, "the responsible party should pay."
"If Wal-Mart or the big box chain stores that are selling foreign shrimp don't want to buy our product because they think it's tainted, whose fault is that?" said state Sen. Norby Chabert, R-Houma. "It's BP's fault. It ain't the man on the boat."
Chabert and about a dozen state legislators addressed the crowd.
Shrimpers are also angry about being blamed for recent spikes in the number of dead turtles.
"Shrimpers are not the cause the turtle mortality, all the data shows it," George Barisich of the United Commercial Fisherman's Association said.
Science also shows Louisiana shrimp are as safe to consume as any in the world, but shrimpers argue, a negative perception is keeping many customers away.
"The only solution right now," Barisich added, "is to muster up all the support, which we're doing right now with our state legislators, to make Feinberg put some of that $14 billion he's got left into an escrow account to establish a subsidy program to sustain the industry."
