Cajun Cuisine at Risk as Oil's Effects Spread

Stephen Stryjewski needs oysters. As chef and co-owner of the Cajun and Creole restaurant Cochon in New Orleans, fresh and locally harvested oysters normally could be taken for granted. But not these days.

On June 10, the city's oldest oyster company, P&J Oysters, closed its doors after 134 years -- another sign that the BP oil spill is not just hurting local businesses, but directly and indirectly threatening centuries of culinary traditions along the Gulf Coast and throughout the United States.

That threat is detailed for the first time in a study by a researcher at the University of Arizona, working with the Renewing America's Food Traditions Alliance (RAFT). The study identifies 240 kinds of "historically eaten, place-based foods" of the Gulf Coast region that are now at risk of being lost forever. The list not only includes seafood, but many local heirloom vegetables.

Do you like Tabasco sauce, gumbo file, okra, crayfish, brown shrimp, redfish or grouper? They or their ingredients are on the list.

"These things are essential to the unique flavors of Creole and Cajun cuisine," said University of Arizona social scientist Gary Nabhan. "The people that can be dramatically affected are the market gardeners. If there's no shrimp, then there's the squash to stuff the shrimp into." No one will eat that squash and it could go out of production and disappear entirely. "The 'eat to save it' phrase definitely works for the cultivated foods."

In fact, many of those farmers are often the members of the same families who help harvest the seafood that filled the menus of regional restaurants, said Chef Stryjewski.

"I use a lot of local growers," Stryjewski told Discovery News. "Creole tomatoes and other Louisiana-specific produce individually can't sustain themselves except in conjunction with six, eight or nine months of shrimping and fishing."

So if the fishing goes, the vegetables could disappear as well.

"It's a matter of being able to hold on," said Stryjewski. These fishers, shrimpers and market gardeners need help, he said.

"Many former Gulf Coast residents who farmed or gardened there have literally left jars of their family's heirloom vegetable seeds in sheds and cupboards to rot or slowly die, breaking a chain of agricultural transmission of seeds and knowledge that began centuries ago," Nabhan explained.

The effects of the BP oil spill are still unfolding. Right now, fish are still coming in, said Stryjewski. In fact, those fishermen who have not been diverted to oil clean-up operations are being swamped with fish, he said. That might be because the fish are gathering in oil-free areas, he said.

The same cannot be said for oysters or shrimpers. Some shrimpers are trying to stretch the supplies out by freezing as much of their catch as possible to sell later, Stryjewski said.

Ironically, shrimp are most likely to bounce back quickly, said marine scientist Megan Westmeyer of the South Carolina Aquarium and a coordinator for the Sustainable Seafood Initiative.

"Shrimp have a very high reproductive capacity," said Westmeyer.

Oysters are normally rather resilient too, but are facing both oil from the sea, as well as fresh water releases from the land by the Army Corps of Engineers -- releases devised to stave of the oil. Between the oil and the fresh water, the oysters are having a hard time.

"That's really going to affect their resiliency," Westmeyer said.

As for fish like snapper, grouper and tuna fish, the adults are pretty hardy and can survive the oil, she said. It's their larvae which are vulnerable, especially because the BP spill is in one of the major fish spawning areas, she said. Blue-fin tuna are particularly at risk because they are already very depleted from overfishing.

"So this could set (blue-fin tuna) back even further," said Westmeyer.

Even more worrisome, she said, is the prospect of imported fish from less regulated fisheries taking the place of those struggling from the BP spill. That could spur overfishing in distant places.

Meanwhile back at Cochon, Chef Stryjewski is trying to keep his menu intact.

"I'm very dedicated to buying Louisiana fish and Gulf fish," Stryjewski said.

So far he is doing his best to use regional foods and has not raised prices to reflect the higher costs. But the changes are seeping in anyway.

"They just sent me a supply of Washington oysters," Stryjewski said, sounding a little exasperated. "They just came in about 15 minutes ago. I haven't had a chance to try them."