The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and LSU are joining together to survey the commercial seafood industry about the economic impacts suffered during the last two hurricane seasons. LDW administrator, Jason Froeba, they will take the information gathered and throw it into a model “and try to generate some estimates we can use to request some hurricane assistance from the federal government.”
The questionnaire takes a few minutes to fill out, with information requested from the likes of seafood producers, harvesters, dealers and charter boat operators.
Froeba says those surveyed are asked to complete the form, whether their impacts from Laura, Delta, Zeta or Ida were large or small. “We need to come up with an accurate, sensible estimate and we don’t want it to look like our estimate has been skewed in any way, that may not come across very well,” said Froeba.
Froeba says it’s important they get a good reading on the economic impacts of the storms from a variety of folks working in the commercial seafood industry. He says that includes, “any seafood processors, any dealers, vessel owners, commercial fishermen; really anyone that’s in the supply chain for the commercial fishing industry.”
He says at this point there is no dollar estimate of damage done to the industry by the hurricanes, thus the reason for the survey.
