Project Gulf Impact has just released a new video of several local Gulf Fisherman speaking out against the federal government’s decision to open waters contaminated by the BP Gulf Oil spill to fishing.
While the entire video is very revealing Kindra Arnesen brings shocking new details to light that no one is talking about.
As a little background BP and the Federal Government gave Kindra Arnesen unlimited insider access to the BP Gulf Oil Spill cleanup and response operations.
As the government forces seafood to market Gulf fisherman are being forced to sign a waiver to make them and NOT BP liable for contaminated BP Gulf Oil Spill seafood.
Video description and transcripts.
By Alexander Higgins
The Feds have waved a magic wand..
and Gulf waters are clean…
and Gulf seafood is safe to eat.
But why are Gulf fisherman being forced to sign a waiver
That makes them and NOT BP liable for contaminated BP Gulf Oil Spill seafood
Thanks for coming out here everybody.
My name is Kindra Arnesen and I am the outreach coordinater for Cultural Heritage Society.
I have also been one of the only residents to be granted security into BP’s offices, their operation sections.
I have been up in the air out to the Deepwater Horizon site itself, all over to say the least.
I have several things I want to address with everyone today.
Number one that I want to address to everyone is that they are opening Louisiana waters to shrimping as of Monday.
This is a huge concern.
From what we are being told the dock owners have asked our fisherman to sign a waiver saying that they would be responsible for their own catch and as to whether or not the catch was clean without chemicals in it.
This liability can not fall with our fisherman.
The bottom line is and I am going to propose this within the next week to the EPA, FDA, BP, our parish officials and our government officials is if the FDA has waived this magic wand and says that the Gulf is clean and that the seafood is safe, let’s get some FDA mobile units on our docks and let’s do some chemical testing.
Not a sniff test — with a machine take chemical samples of both the organs and the tissues from the species as they are being brought into the docks for sale.
The thing about this is that people need to understand something — one batch of bad seafood goes on the market and it is over for our commercial fisherman.
All along the coast our fisherman have rebuilt from dirt after hurricane on top off hurricane.
We went back, we worked the waters, we did what we had to do.
Everyone’s got these new loans, these new homes, and they have no equity built into them.
If we can’t work BP has already put up a fight and they are not going to pay our fisherman, bottom line!
If we can’t work we can’t pay our bills.
We are going to lose our places, we are going to lose our homes, our land, our footholds.
I am talking about people with generations of commercial fisherman as far back as we can trace.
This is their divine right.
This was handed down to them family member after family member.
The heritage here, it is going to be a cultural genocide, if they do not test the seafood and make sure that it is safe.
Not only to protect our fisherman, but hello, what about the consumer.
We have prided our self in bringing out fresh fish, fresh shrimp, fresh seafood altogether.
I mean we take the best care of our fish all along the Gulf coast, our commercial fisherman know that.
They know how to do this.
They have been doing it for generation after generation so we pride ourselves in bringing fresh uncontaminated seafood to the market for the consumer to eat.
The Gulf produced, before BP, the best seafood in the entire United States.
So the bottom line here is we need the FDA on the docks to do the chemical testing for the components in the crude which is much more toxic than the Lousianna sweet crude.
Just wanted to put that in their.
And we need them to test for the chemical components in the dispersants.
As far as the vessel of opportunity program goes I have heard the term spillionaires, I have heard get rich quick and let me tell you something about that.
The vessel of opportunity program — BP sent me a letter and it clearly states that federal law clearly states that any and all income from alternative employment or businesses undertaken or potential income from alternative employment or businesses not undertaken but reasonably available will be deducted from their claim in its entirety.
So that means that our guys have been out here, our charter fisherman and our commercial fisherman, have been out here cleaning up BP’s mess and taking BP’s people all over the place and working off their own claim.
What if we didn’t have boats and they would have had to hire them anyway and pay the claim of their litigants.
Then they would of had to pay for the boats themselves out of their own pockets and not out of our business money.
You know we have people down here from all over the country.
I know that in Louisiana we have got someone from Gretna with a plumbing company that has four boats on the job and has never fished a day in his life and has guaranteed positions.
I can’t even get even get home Indians who have been there generation after generation on to the job and we have these people down there on this job working making all of this money hiring captains and putting them on their on these boats.
Then they can turn around and still take their money from their plumbing company but we can’t have our money from our company even though, you look at the photographs, who’s on the boats dripping in oil?
The commercial fisherman that’s who.
So the bottom line here is this has been mismanaged and poorly handled from day one.
The oil is still all over around our peninsula in Louisiana and in Plaquemenes Parish.
I am the closest resident to the Deepwater Horizon site itself.
I know what is going on.
I am all over the place and I am here to tell you it’s not cleaned up.
You have got to understand the first third of the time, 33 and a third, 70,000 gallons of dispersant.
The second 66.6 guess what?
1,730,000 gallons of dispersant.
You mean to tell me that 66 percent of the time that they put this much dispersant out and now here a month later that it is gone.
There is no way!
As far as Bonnie goes it “Broke it up and got rid of it” — Bonnie was a rain cloud.
This last one that we had when it came through there was some bad weather but it wasn’t a hurricane and there hasn’t been enough time for this to biodegrade anyway, its not gone.
And the health concerns.
We are going to be doing some health studies in the area.
We are having people who are breaking out in rashes and different things so we will be taking care of that.
Thank you.
Credits
This video contains a clip of a longer original video made by Project Gulf Impact. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuf_RAZKdhg&feature=player_embedded
So what’s wrong with this picture?
Commercial fisherman James “Catfish” Miller, took fishermen Danny Ross Jr. and Mark Stewart, along with scientist Dr. Ed Cake of Gulf Environmental Associates and others out and they found the fishing grounds to be contaminated with oil and dispersants.
Now BP is leaving town and no longer paying out of work fisherman and to help aide and abet the Government is forcing fisherman to put contaminated seafood on the market.
Meanwhile as the government declares Gulf waters are clean and the Gulf seafood is safe they are making the fisherman and not BP liable for any damages caused from any toxic seafood that makes consumers sick.
Update
Here is an interesting perspective posted over at GLP by a user named “Don Smith”.
I’m a lawyer by training, so I think I’m seeing an endgame here.
BP’s claims are offset by “income that was reasonably available.”
Government opens fishing grounds. This is a gambit – win-win for BP, lose-lose for the fishermen.
Choice A – Commercial fishermen won’t sign waivers and won’t fish if the seafood is contaminated. BP will then offset their claims by the amount they “reasonably would have earned” had they signed the waivers and begun fishing. The fishermen lose money because they “could” have fished the newly opened waters.
Choice B – Commercial fishermen sign the waivers and fish and sell contaminated fish, destroying their careers because no one will eat Gulf seafood for years. BP’s waiver gets BP off the hook for this loss of income.
This is a sick game that BP is playing and the Feds obviously have their back. Members of Congress from those Gulf districts must fight back. In order for them to do that, residents of Gulf districts need to make a stink about this.
The ONLY hope is that the waivers will be invalidated because the fisherman are not given a choice but to sign them.