Gulf oil spill spreads

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They call this city the End of the World, and for many shrimpers whose entire lives have been spent here in Louisiana’s southernmost outpost, it suddenly feels like it. As officials continue to struggle to stem nearly 200,000 gallons of crude oil that has surged from the base of the Gulf of Mexico in what may be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Mississippi River delta residents are trying to make a buck as long as their fragile business survives, according to a Time report.
Early Saturday morning, 48-year-old Billy De La Cruz moved buckets of plump white shrimp - “the size of golf balls” - from the barrel of his boat onto the back of a pickup truck. He’d just returned from days pulling shrimp three miles off the coast of Louisiana. Next stop: New Orleans, a 90-minute’s drive to the north, where he hopes to get $10 a pound for shrimp that would normally cost $3.50. Grocers and restaurants there and across the Gulf Coast fear that the oil spill will diminish a regional dietary staple. “It’s going to be unreal,” he says of the anticipated demand.
It may also be one of his last chances to get a profit, at least for a while. The son of a welder and homemaker, De La Cruz began shrimping at age 8. He bought a boat and built a successful shrimp business. Then came Hurricane Katrina. “Took my boat, my house, everything,” he says. Somehow, he managed to buy Captain Prong, a 55-foot-long white boat with blue trim.