You really gotta love it.
NEW ORLEANS – Even when the oily sheen starts fading from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, it manages to become bad news for fishermen.
Many of those whose fisheries were shut down by the oil spill have found work skimming oil, putting out boom or ferrying cleanup supplies through BP's Vessels of Opportunity program. But as the crude sinks, evaporates or breaks down, they may be left with nothing to do but wait for their claim checks to arrive and for their fishing grounds to reopen.
No one knows how much longer BP plans to keep them working, and some fishermen, like Freddy Creppel, have been waiting for weeks to get a call.
"It was good work. I was making something," said the Buras shrimper and fisherman, who joined the program and got 17 days of work using his boat to help guide workers to oiled birds stuck in the slick.
"I'm hurting pretty bad. I'm struggling," the 37-year-old said. "Guess they'll tell us sometime."
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said it's clear the cleanup effort is being scaled back even though oil is still showing up on the coast.
He said his biggest fear is that BP and the federal government "are going to start pulling back. They say they are not but already they have canceled catering contracts, they've stopped production of boom at factories."
The gusher set off by an April 20 oil-rig explosion spewed between 94 million gallons and 184 million gallons into the Gulf before a temporary cap stopped the flow July 15. A permanent fix is expected to be weeks away.
Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's oil-spill response chief, said that once the oil is stopped for good, the cleanup effort may start ratcheting down. The work has involved 11 million feet of boom, 811 oil skimmers and 40,000 people.
There were 1,584 Vessels of Opportunity in use as of Thursday, according to the Deepwater Horizon Unified Incident Command Web site. Thousands more vessels than that are under contract with the program, nearly 3,500 in Louisiana alone.
