Earth Protect Blog

NEW ORLEANS — Aaron Jones made his way through the crowd to the foot of the stage, chin raised. An oyster shucking contest was under way, and the master of ceremonies was going around distributing oysters to audience members as if giving Communion, dropping one in Mr. Jones’s open mouth.

“Plump and salty,” Mr. Jones, 26, a hospitality major at the University of New Orleans, proclaimed after walking back to his girlfriend’s side with a big smile. Then, in a more somber moment, he said: “This may be the end of an era.”

Celebration and apprehension marked the inaugural New Orleans Oyster Festival, which kicked off Saturday in a parking lot in the French Quarter, in scorching heat tempered by sporadic bursts of rain.

The festival was originally scheduled for the summer of 2006, organizers said, but Hurricane Katrina’s destruction the previous year forced them to scuttle the plans. This year, the festival finally debuted, but the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which has closed waters to oyster harvesting and poses a lethal threat to Louisiana’s famous oyster beds, cast a serious pall on festivities meant to honor the farmers and restaurateurs who have made the bivalves synonymous with this city.

Could the first oyster festival be the last? Sal Sunseri, vice-president of P & J Oyster Company and one of the organizers, refused to entertain the question or any possibility that the spill spelled doom for the Louisiana gulf oyster industry.

“I don’t want to go there,” Mr. Sunseri said, calling the industry “a heritage and culture and livelihood.”

“I’m optimistic,” he said. “I believe in God and in miracles.”

But many in the sparse crowd said they had come with heavy hearts — less to have a good time than to show support for an endangered institution.

“People have it subconsciously in the back of their mind,” said Megan Barnett, 27, a respiratory therapist who came with a friend from Baton Rouge. “It’s not good. It’s not good at all.”

Brian Landry, executive chef at Galatoire’s Restaurant, said he was closely watching projections based on computer models that showed currents taking the oil slick to Florida and up the Atlantic Coast, sparing the oyster beds.

“We actually might dodge a major bullet,” he said.

He said tourists were asking more questions — like “How can we tell the seafood is safe?” But Mr. Landry said demand for local oysters among his customers had actually increased slightly.

“People feel they might not have it much longer,” he said.

FULL STORY http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06oyster.html?hp