Seafood Sales Suffer With Perception of Oil

At Jimmy Olive's Southern Gulf Seafood there seems to be only one thing missing: customers.

"They're all afraid everything's covered with oil," He says.

A normal week would mean the sale of some four hundred pounds of fresh gulf or Mobile Bay shrimp. This week it was 50 pounds. The next few weeks normally, would grow into a couple of thousand pounds a week. Olive doesn't have much hope that will happen.

The shrimp being sold at Southern Gulf Seafood doesn't even come from the northern gulf, but from South Florida and the Atlantic Coast of Georgia. But its not the shrimp, its perception, says Olive. People are just distrustful of any seafood right now because of the oil spill.

It's something that will take time for folks to get over, even after Mobile Bay was opened for shrimping just last week. "People still don't believe its safe," he says.