Fishermen: Gulf Water Not Free of Oil

Have federal and state officials misled the public about the purity of water in the Gulf? Some fishermen in the area believe so, and they are none too pleased about it. On August 6, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources officially opened all of its territorial waters to commercial fishing. Yet an expedition from Truthout.org reveals that the water contains significant concentrations of submerged oil. Fishermen themselves have taken to testing the water to prove the slick from the nation's largest ever oil spill persists, contacting local and national media outlets to bring attention to the issue."We think they opened shrimp season prematurely," said one lifelong fisherman who refuses to trawl for shrimp. "How can we put our product back on the market when everybody in America knows what happened down here? I have seen so many dead animals in the last few months I can't even keep count." The Daily Beast also recently commissioned a test to determine the presence of oil and dispersants in Gulf seafood—however, this study paints a slightly different picture. The test found undetectable or minute levels of petroleum hydrocarbons or dispersants in a cross-section of Gulf seafood, comparable to levels found in seafood in the Atlantic Ocean.