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Please do not look to my life, but take me even as a lamppost on the road that indicates the way, but cannot walk the way itself.”
— Gandhi
Within almost exactly eight months to the day of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the world’s fishing communities find they are once again mourning great losses; this time back-to-back hurricanes, Katrina and Rita.
In the Gulf of Mexico, on August 29, Katrina devastated fishing communities along the three states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Two weeks later, Texas felt the wrath of Rita, as did Louisiana.
Preliminary reports put the number of lives lost in the thousands, depending on the source. Assessments of infrastructure, fishing boats, and other personal losses, however, appear to reach into the billions of dollars.
Mississippi, for example, didn’t fare well when Katrina made landfall. According to Mississippi Department of Marine Resources’ preliminary assessment, 100 percent of fishing piers in the coastal areas were either destroyed or severely damaged by
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In the affected area from the Alabama/Mississippi border to the Louisiana/Texas border, 10 - 15,000 boats are affected.” Photo: Scott Labak |
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Katrina. The few boats that were spared found themselves without a port or other type of safe harbor. Ironically, one year ago, the State was breathing a sigh of relief as it seemed that they had been spared by hurricane Ivan by being on its “good side.”
Katrina wasn’t as kind; entire coastlines of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana were in her path.
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So widespread was the devastation that on September 9 the U.S. Department of Commerce declared a formal determination of failure in the fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico due to the flooding and destruction. Such a determination allows for provisions of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and.
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