Louisiana's Oysters, America's Wetlands, and the Storms of 2005

Abstract

When Katrina made landfall near Empire, Louisiana's “oyster capital,” it devastated the public and private oyster grounds of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes. Rita followed with similar damage in parishes to the west of the Mississippi River. These storms thus struck at a core of Louisiana's maritime heritage. Much attention has focused on the physical and social destruction these events have caused in New Orleans and on the failures of the public response efforts. Social scientists are in a position to assess such damages and to critique this collective failure of response. In this article, I seek to contribute to a parallel assessment of the potential of the oyster industry to recover from the storms of 2005, after a decade of substantial diminishment in political and economic power and public support.