A tool used to shuck oysters is left in a sink following the end of a shift at the P&J Oyster Company on the last day they will be shucking oysters due to contamination from the BP oil spill June 10, 2010 in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. The company, which sells some 60,000 oysters per day to restaurants in the New Orleans area, will try and obtain oysters from neighboring states. In the meantime, many workers fear that they will loose their jobs due to the oil spill. TIME

By Paul Adams
BBC News, Louisiana Louisiana’s oyster beds have not recovered from the US’s worst environmental catastrophe, the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster, and some fishermen fear they never will.  … The oysters were good but hardly plentiful. At this, the season of peak demand, far too many were simply dead. Not, as you might think, coated in sticky oil or even poisoned by chemical dispersants but killed off, as luck would have it, by fresh water. Millions of gallons from the Mississippi River were hurriedly diverted into the bays and marshes of the delta to keep the oil from rolling in, earlier in the year – but this upset the delicate balance of fresh and salty conditions the oysters need to survive. … On the edge of New Orleans’ legendary French quarter, the P & J Oyster Company has been in business for more than 130 years. Like Nick Collins, Al Sunseri wonders if he has what it takes to recover. …  He was confident, as everyone was, that it was just a matter of time before the oysters reappeared and everyone was happy again. But now he wonders about his son, who has experienced depression and has not been working for a couple of months. … He thinks about Alaska and the herrings that disappeared from Prince William Sound three years after the Exxon Valdez spill, never to return. …

Louisiana oyster beds remain empty after BP disaster via The Oil Drum