Fear of gulf seafood after spill hits businesses hard
On the day six weeks ago that the news first broke about oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon rig, the line of customers at Joe Patti's Seafood in Pensacola stretched out the door. Everyone wanted to stock up on shrimp and fish while it was still safe to eat.
Sales boomed for three days, said Frank Patti, whose family opened the seafood house in 1930. Since then, he said, "my business has dropped off 22 percent.''
Fishermen and seafood dealers across Florida say the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has tainted the very idea of fresh shrimp and fish from the gulf. They say that although they are catching seafood only from areas not affected by the spill, some restaurants in other states are taking it off their menus and some grocery chains are removing it from coolers.
"They're concerned that seafood out of the gulf might be contaminated," said Steven Rash, whose Water Street Seafood in Apalachicola sells fish and shrimp to restaurants and groceries across the country.
"I had one of my big retail distributors in San Francisco who told me that a lot of people are just shying away from gulf shrimp now," Rash said.
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