put a straw into the gulf to suck it out but he s doing everything he can. juliet: penny, brad, thanks for joining us. appreciate it. gregg: continuing on the subject, louisiana seafood industry bringing in nearly $2.5 billion a year. billion. think about that. not this year. penny shrimpers and oystermen in the bayou state are losing business big time and some are closing shop because the oil disaster. will that mean fishermen on the east coast, perhaps will see a big jump in profits? not so fast. molly line reports from washington. reporter: at seafood restaurants up and down the east coast prepare for the summer season the impact of the oil spill in the gulf of mexico looms large. 70% of the nation s shrimp catch comes from the gulf. and it is also a primary supplier of shellfish and seafood distribute stores are seeing a spike in prices already. oysters, we have seen prices go up 25% and we have seen a shortage of product coming out of the gulf. and on shrimp we have seen p
they let you come back out here. that s what i say. reporter: stephen peterson works with his dad lawrence, oystering in these waters for 30 years. stephen only works weekends. it s extra money, but for his dad, this is all he knows. what about you? if you re not out on the water, are you going to be able to make? i doubt it. reporter: what would you do? i don t know. there s nothing here to do. reporter: many of these oystermen have already gotten $5,000 checks from bp. a monthly advance on any oil or any losses. some locals were out on the water looking for any signs of oil. bp is paying them, they told us. it s hard eking out a living here, and now this, says sandra powell. this is what we want to do. we choose to do this. it s not something we have to do. we want to do it. we love it. this is what we re happy with.
their final catch for a very long time. reporter: sunday on appalachia cola bay, the oystermen here, not a day of rest. it can t be. not now. they are racing against tides and wind. racing to beat the oncoming oil. i keep telling them, it s getting closer and closer. reporter: are you trying to get as much done as can you now before it gets here? yes, sir. get as many as i can until it gets here. reporter: victor has been working the bay for four years. the work is backbreaking. he may have enough oysters to get to 10 or 15 60-pound bags before day s end. $20 a bag. a hard one, but a living. if the oil makes the bay, he says, it s over. if it comes in here, it s going to kill it. it will be a while before
to figure that out. the heads of the nyse and nasdaq are pointing fingers at each other s systems and now now it s looking less like human error and more like a possible computer glitch. that s it from cnbc. now back to hardball. welcome back to hardball. a headline on page one of the today s wall street journal says in a nutshell what may have led to oil rig explosion in the gulf. oil regulators ceded oversight to the drillers. how did it come to pass? the answer may lie in the oil industry friendly bush-cheney years. three states on behalf of sha richers, fisheries and oystermen and robert f. kennedy jr. is a professor at pace university. together they host a syndicated
1935. all of our family is either off shot, they all have their own companies, we ve got our company. but all of our companies have fishermen, oystermen, distributors, all of these people are going to be affected. we have already i was talking to one of my uncles today, he is already having to send his mullet fishermen down east, so they can mullet fish. the price of mullet has already gone up. that s something simple. but when you sit back and look at what it s doing to the economy, what it s doing to the local fishermen, you ve got people that this has been their entire life. they don t know anything else, other than fishing. or oystering, or shrimping. and what are they going to do now? this is not something that s going to go away overnight. is something that we re going to feel for years to come. before they were even talking about, like, mr. shay, that it could possibly go up the east coast, my family was already talking about it, something they have lived and breathed for year