Gulf Shrimpers Upset Over Survey
for Oil and Gas

by Xerxes Wilson

Local members of the shrimping industry are fuming at the state’s decision to allow a large seismic survey project in lower Terrebonne Parish during the state’s inshore fall shrimp season.

The project involves some 435 square miles of lower Terrebonne into St. Mary Parish.

Locals have complained the work will interfere with the industry’s most lucrative season, which is underway. They also complain of being left out when the project was under consideration by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries.

“If you put this out and you are going to mess up a man’s paycheck, make damn good and sure that you work with the industry,” said Kim Chauvin, who owns three Terrebonne seafood businesses with her husband, David. “They didn’t even try to talk to this industry.”

Wildlife & Fisheries permits such seismic activity and also sets shrimp seasons as it regulates the industry.

Seismic monitoring involves sound detection devices known as geophones being buried into the water beds. Those devices detect energy created by strategically placed explosives. Surveyors will be able to use the data to map the subsurface in search of oil and gas deposits.

Castex Energy, which is responsible for the project, couldn’t be reached for comment.

The project includes the Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area near the mouth of the Atchafalaya River and Wax Lake Outlet. From there it runs east to Lake Mechant and Caillou Lake.

Chauvin said she’s heard of shrimpers being run out of the area and others being allowed to trawl in the project footprint.

“I’m sick of the shrimping industry paying for what the oil industry has to do. I do realize we have to work together in some things. But this is not someone willing to work with the shrimp industry,” Chauvin said.

The survey company has no obligation to police the area but provided maps to the shrimpers so they could avoid these areas and is providing on-site monitors to alert them of the equipment, Wildlife & Fisheries spokesman Bo Boehringer said in an email.

If shrimpers are allowed in the project area, it’s unclear exactly how much of a problem or risk the survey equipment will be on their equipment. The entire project area isn’t being surveyed at once. The work is conducted in sectors moving west to east.

Wildlife & Fisheries said the surveying the equipment can stay along the water bottoms for days, but downplayed any potential damage to trawls.

“Previously used survey technology included cables connecting rows of sensing equipment, but current wireless technology provides for less intrusive equipment dispersal, offering leeway for shrimp trawls between buoys with wireless sensing equipment,” Boehringer wrote.

Boehringer said the only stipulation regarding a wildlife season is the activity cannot interfere with duck season in the wildlife management area.

In addition to there being some considerations for shrimp season, Chauvin said there should have been some communication with the industry during the permitting process. The first they heard of it were when maps noting the zone were brought to her business to distribute to other shrimpers.

The department ran a legal notice 10 times in The Courier during March and April to announce a public meeting on the survey work. The notice did not detail where the project was to take place, other than naming the parish.

“Everything has been after the fact. Go read the notice that they put in the paper. It has nothing about dealing with the shrimp industry,” Chauvin said. “They did not make one lick of a try to talk to this industry in the process.”

The project began in April and is estimated to take nine months to complete, weather permitting.

Responding to allegations Wildlife & Fisheries didn’t consider shrimpers’ concerns, Boehringer provided a statement from department Secretary Robert Barham.

“We have learned from this experience and will apply the lessons learned to future permitted activities along the coast,” Barham wrote.

Dolphins are not apart of the National Heritage wildlife inventory that catalogs rare, threatened and endangered species and habitats and were not subject to any permit restrictions, Boehringer wrote. Sea turtles are endangered and are tracked by nesting sites, none of which were in the permitted zone.

This story originally appeared in the Houma Courier on August 22, 2014.