Southern Offshore Fishing
            Association

Gulf Almost Completely Open

The worst seems to be over.  Some of the fishing boats in the Southeastern Gulf have been having successful trips and now NMFS has opened the rest of the Eastern Gulf, those waters to the East of DeSoo Canyon that have been so productive for so long are all open again.  We'll keep listening to what the returning fishermen have to say after their trips and report back with what we hope will be good news and a hopeful outlook for our futures.

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NMFS has scaled back the closed area so that most of the coastal areas and the primary fishing grounds for the bottom fishing fleet in the Gulf is now open.  The latest re-opening gives us back the area off the panhandle of Florida and leaves only a relatively small block directly surrounding the site of the BP incident.  Hopefully they are going to be able to have the entire Gulf open again before too much longer.

Right now, things look good.  The fishing grounds are open and boats are returning to port with good catches, but it may take a long time, years, before the full impact of this disaster on the economy, ecology and fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico is known..  There are a lot of questions still to be answered and a lot of legitimate concerns about how the oversight of the offshore oil industry, and industry that is important to the economy of the Gulf States, particularly Louisiana and Texas, let everyone down.  However there are many legitimate concerns about the ongoing safety of the Gulf waters and the possibility of even greater harm being done to the Gulf and the entire coastal waters of the U.S. if the safety regulation that are in place aren't stringently adhered to and possibly upgraded.

We are pleased the fisheries are back in operation.  We are pleased that the well is capped and the oil spew has been stopped.  However, we really don't want to see this happen again and hope we can rely on our government to show even half as much interest in regulating and overseeing the oil industry as it has demonstrated in regard to the fishing industry for many years.