Kevin Drury and Rick Moreau have been shrimpers for 16 and 20 years, respectively. Drury and other members of his family had eight shrimp trawlers at the Venice marina. Their boats were some of the 1,500 that sunk when Katrina hit the marina. With a $1,000 monthly loan payment on his sunken boat, Drury said, “I can't sit back and wait” for the government to raise the sunk vessels.

He related how the parish authorities didn't want to give the fishermen a pass to get down to check on their boats. Even though it was a month since Katrina “we had to fight our way in,” he said. “I was able to save the engines, my neighbors did too. But others lost theirs due to the time underwater.”

Drury figured he needed $7,000 to get his boat fixed, which was cheap compared to others. The ice plant that shrimpers depend on was also destroyed. According to Alan Vaughn, a state extension agent in the parish, restoration of electricity is six months to a year away.

Many fishermen have applied for Small Business Administration loans. The agency told Drury’s dad he didn't qualify. They told him he'd have to get a commercial loan, but Drury noted it’s “hard to borrow when you have lost your home.”

Drury said he received the basic $2,000 and $2,350 from FEMA for those who evacuated. He said he has five kids 150 miles away in a Baton Rouge motel that FEMA is paying for through January 7. But he’s having a hard time paying for their clothes, food, and other expenses.

“It’s other fishermen who are helping us,” Drury said. Acy Cooper, vice-president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, told the Militant about fishermen from other parishes sending “truckloads of clothes and food.”

The damage from the storm is compounded by low prices that processors are giving shrimp fishermen for their catch. “The shrimp dock sets the price. A 40-50 size shrimp used to bring $1.90, now the price is 90 cents to $1.00,” Drury said. At the same time fuel costs have risen to $2.00 a gallon. Cooper said that shrimpers are trying to pressure the processing plant to raise the price.

At the Empire Marina here 1,000 oyster boats sunk during Rita and its predecessor, Katrina.

“My god do we need help down here,” said Jimmy Morgan, 54, a third-generation oyster fisherman. “Right now I’m robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’m using flood insurance money for my home to fix my boat.” His home in the hardest-hit southern half of the parish was flooded with 20 feet of water. “Losing my house is one thing, but losing my livelihood is something else,” Morgan said.

He explained that the government appropriated $85 million to raise the sunk boats, but two months after the storms “there were two cranes sitting in the harbor doing nothing.” He and three other fishermen raised $7,500 of their own money to hire a dragline and a tugboat to do the job. He thinks it'll cost him $12,000 to repair the damage.

“Oyster fishermen lost everything,” said Morgan, who leases 100 acres of oyster bed from the government. Testifying before the House Resources Committee’s fisheries subcommittee December 15, William Hogarth, head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that $104 million in Louisiana’s oyster reefs and beds and coastal wetlands were destroyed by Katrina and Rita. Hogarth estimates losses in boats and equipment for Gulf Coast fishermen from the storms is as high as $1.2 billion.
 
 
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