Gulf seafood still battling reputation after spill

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BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala.  - Bayou La Batre is known for its seafood. In fact, it's the seafood capital of Alabama. Catching, processing, and selling fresh Gulf seafood is how many people in the Bayou earn a living.
For 30-plus years, Tommy Auld and his family have been shipping shrimp all over the country from their business, Edgewater Seafood. The business is settled just off the dock on the water in Bayou La Batre. Over the past year, everything about their business has changed.
"They is just such few boats now; you just can't make it hardly," Auld said.
Auld said when NOAA closed most all waters where shrimp and oysters were caught, his business came to a standstill. He said it got even worse when most of the boats that went out and caught shrimp to sell to Edgewater Seafood were hired out for the VOO program.
He said at that point there wasn't a chance he would get fresh shrimp, and gas prices aren't helping either.
"Right now, they can hardly go out and match shrimp prices for fuel prices. You can't even hardly break even right now, but maybe later on this summer they may pick back up and production may be better. You just gotta hope for the best," he added.
After 35 years of handling shrimp, Auld said he knows the industry better than most. He said the impact of the oil spill has been devastating.
"All the boats they dwindled out here, there, and yonder cause they gone outta business.  So it's a dying industry in other words, in this area," he told FOX10.
As for his buyers Auld said: "For months and months they were afraid to eat, but they have come around now and realized they haven't died from eating it."
Auld hopes the images of the oil spill will fade away with time and seafood lovers will keep on peeling and shucking. In other other words, he hopes people will forget the fear they built up in their minds.
"Nobody hasn't gotten sick yet from eating it. Gulf seafood is still fine.  I eat 'em whenever I want to and everybody else does, and they've been selling pretty good right now. People, when it's fresh in their mind they rather say well we better eat a chicken but after a while its nature people forget about it, maybe," Auld said.
Whether or not seafood lovers return to buying and eating the food of the sea, Auld and his family won't be able to provide their services much longer. The family said they don't have the means to continue to operate the business and they'll be closing sometime soon.
"We at the end of the line there now we probably goin' close up in a month or two," Auld said.