Industry News
Gulf oil spill spurs business—at least temporarily
we rely heavily on in the spring,” says Allen Taylor of
Advanced Marine Inc. of Biloxi, MS. “But BP started
hiring commercial and pleasure boats to go out and
search for oil and place booms. A lot of them needed
EPIRBs or to replace radars, VHFs and depth finders.
So for the past six weeks it’s been a boom, but we
knew it was short-term sales and it’s starting to taper
off. We’ll get some residual work for the next few
weeks but the boom period is over.”
Chris St. Romain of Sea-Trac Offshore in Hanra-
han, LA, says, “It’s generated some new business for
us—there’s a lot of activity going on out there
between containment and cleanup. It took a while to
get it going, but it seems to be heading in the right
direction. We had a couple of our best months. The
boat dealers, though, are really hurting; they closed all
our fishing areas. They just opened them this week-
end.”
Romain adds that his biggest concern is the mora-
torium on offshore drilling because of the large num-
ber of people and support vessels that would put out of
work. “We’d likely lose 25,000 jobs in southern
Louisiana, and a lot of these guys are recreational fish-
ermen.”
Beier says the situation is similar to the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina. “No one wished it to happen but
the economic boom that followed has rebuilt the City
of New Orleans and southeast Louisiana.” He says the
damage done by Katrina to the oil rigs was extensive,
which meant a huge amount of repair work. “While it
was a horrible mess when it happened, the net result
has been very positive.”
As for the effects on the environment, Romain
says “We’re not seeing massive fish kills or marsh
dying. It’s not like everything is covered with oil—it’s
a far cry from that.”
While the impact on shellfish could be dire, finfish
populations may be able to swim out of the way of
concentrations of crude. “Speckled trout and reds
seem able to avoid the oil,” says Taylor. We think fish-
ing may survive and be back to normal next year.
We’re cautiously optimistic.”
If there’s a silver lining of sorts in the oil spill that has plagued the Gulf of Mexico since April, it is that the activity to contain and clean up the crude
has created business for marine electronics dealers.
