Improved oyster harvest after Hurricane Andrew
Buddy Daisy and Earl Melancon by Susan Testroet-Bergeron, 2012; 4700.2561
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Buddy Daisy: So right after Hurricane Andrew came through, it . . . I don't know what it
done. It changed the environmental out there some kind of way. And them reefs took up . . . I mean,
they formed oysters like out of this world. This boat that I got up there on this wall would leave
my house at four o'clock in the morning and run to Lake Pelto. That's a six-hour run. And come back
with as much as 300 sacks of oysters sitting on the deck of that boat. When you looked at one, you
looked at them all. They was all pretty round, single oysters, big oysters. And what caused it, I
really don't know. I think the river was kind of high that year or something. I don't know exactly
what really changed it but something changed it. An oyster is an animal that's going to tell you the
environmental how it is. Earl?
Earl Melancon: Yeah, I mean, I think that last statement, Buddy, is kind of the crux of the
whole thing. It's an animal that's on the bottom. It never moves once it sets on the bottom. It's
only in the water column as a larvae for two to three weeks. Once it sets to the bottom, it cements
to the bottom and will never move again. And it does become a good environmental sentinel for what's
happening in the estuaries.