Oil Spill Shuts the Nation’s Oldest Oyster-Shucking Company

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Oil Spill Shuts the Nation’s Oldest Oyster-Shucking Company
June 9, 2010
By KIM SEVERSON
The New York Times

The oldest oyster-shucking operation in the country shucked its last oyster on Thursday, a victim of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Al Sunseri, whose family has run P&J Oyster Company since 1876, said he was about to give the news to the workers at their oyster house in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

“All the people I buy from are unable to work their grounds,” he said. “Unless they open some areas, we’re done.”

The majority of the oyster beds that supplied the company have been shut down. And the beds that are open have been getting flushed with fresh water from the Mississippi River. In an effort to hold back the oil, the authorities have been opening inland water diversion gates to push the oil back. As a result, oysters are dying because they don’t have the right mix of salt and fresh water.

And it is happening in the middle of spawning season, killing baby oysters. It takes 18 months to two years for an oyster to grow to size. So missing an entire spawning season will have a great impact on Louisiana oysters for years to come.

P&J supplies many of the top restaurants in New Orleans as well as people off the street who stop in to buy tubs of fresh, shucked oysters to cook at home.

Mr. Sunseri and his brother Sal, who run the company together, will try to get some fresh, shucked oysters from Alabama to service a few accounts, but what’s available isn’t of the best quality. And the oysters are expensive. Mr. Sunseri said he had been paying about 30 percent more for oysters recently.

As he got ready to hang up the phone and head into the shucking room as the last shucking day ended, he had no idea what he would tell the employees, which number about 25 including members of his family.

“We were just hopeful they would have capped that thing by now,” he said.