Oil Spill Kills Shrimping--’Bye, Bye, Gulf’

The world’s worst oil spill has already killed the Persian Gulf’s $40-million-a-year shrimp industry, which probably will not recover for a decade, the head of a major Gulf fishing company said today.

“The Gulf is out. Bye-bye, Gulf,” Nasser O. Alsaleh, general manager of Saudi Fisheries Co., told reporters at his firm’s sprawling complex in the port of Dammam.

He said that most shrimping operations were suspended in November because of the U.S.-led embargo on trade with Iraq but that the spill will kill chances of the shrimp industry rebounding after the war.

The spill, which began two weeks ago when Iraq allegedly began pumping Kuwaiti crude into the northern Gulf, is expected to cause unprecedented ecological damage to the waterway.

Alsaleh said it already has decimated the fishing industry because of damage to breeding grounds and because of the certainty that it will spread. He said thousands of fishermen, most of them foreigners, have lost their jobs.

Alsaleh said his company will lose $8 million this year because of the spill. Shrimp is the main catch in the Gulf, but Alsaleh said there is also commercial fishing for grouper, red snapper, mackerel and some other varieties.

All shrimping in the Gulf has stopped, and Alsaleh’s company has stopped trawling in its waters, he said.