Millions Lost As a Result of Oyster Area Shutdown

The shutdown of one of the largest oyster areas on the Coast is starting to show its impact. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports.

On what would usually be a busy March morning at the Pass Christian harbor, all is quiet. That’s because the oyster reefs lying right outside the harbor, some of the largest in the state, are shut down. The 21 day mandatory shut down of Area 2-C comes after 11 people got sick last month after reportedly eating Mississippi oysters at a Tennessee restaurant. The Department of Marine Resources estimates that the shutdown has already resulted in 2.8 million dollars in losses, and it's put hundreds of fishermen out of work says Joe Jewell, assistant director of the Office of Marine Fisheries with the D.M.R,

“You know we are essentially talking about 200 plus people that made their living at this that are no longer able to draw income off of this. So it’s having an impact dramatically on them as individual fishermen, and their families.”

James Miller is one of those fishermen. He’s sitting outside his house in D’Iberville, and since he can’t oyster, he’s sewing shrimp nets, trying to get them ready to go.

“We’ve been dead idle in the water there, this is going on the second week. We are one of the people in America that has lost our jobs here on the coast.”

And Miller says it isn’t just him who is affected, but also the three people who work for him and all those others who he can’t afford to pay,

“The fuel man is not getting it, the banks aren’t seeing us, the bill collectors are dying for us to come see them.”

The Department of Marine Resources along with the FDA is continuing their investigation of the tainted oysters.