Can Bayou La Batre Bounce Back?

"Fishing industry doesn't look good," Bubba Bryant says. "But maybe we’ll get lucky. Got to be optimistic, got to be able to laugh or cry."

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Tracy Wahl, NPR /

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A sign on a fishing boat offers a prayer for a nation's struggle at home and abroad.

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Tracy Wahl, NPR /

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In Bayou La Batre, Ala., there's an old saying that there are four seasons: shrimp, oyster, crab and fish. The fishing village south of Mobile revolves around the Gulf of Mexico and its bounty.

But stirred by Hurricane Katrina, the sea rose up against Bayou La Batre last fall, taking half its homes and nearly all available work. And now the town of 2,300 is at a crossroads.

A third of the population are immigrants from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, relatively recent additions to a core of families who have lived off the Bayou for generations. All cling to the hope that a new shrimp season brings. But the seafood industry is suffering. Imported catches are driving down prices for shrimp, in particular. And the rising cost of fuel has offered yet another challenge.

Bayou La Batre's future may lie more with tourism than fishing. But most residents aren't thinking much about the future. They're still trying to cope in Katrina's aftermath.

Before Katrina, Bayou La Batre's shrimp fleet was estimated at 300 strong. Then the storm shoved the bayou over its banks, carrying with it nearly a third of the boats moored here. At least two dozen remain aground, rusting amid the trees of the forested area that halted their unexpected inland voyage. The boats belong to Vietnamese fishermen who don't have insurance, or the means to hire cranes to lift the vessels back into the bayou.

Debris from the storm remains piled along the town's piers... broken pieces of fiberglass hull, fish net and molding mattresses. The city docks are in ruin.

It's a sad fate for what was once a busy maritime hub. With its shrimp fleet, seafood processors and shipbuilders, Bayou La Batre pumped more than $400 million dollars into the region's economy.

But the poverty rate here is twice the national average. Many people barely get by, and that's especially true for seasonal seafood workers.

Now, even some crabbers who were on their own before the storm have been turned down for small business loans to get started again. They lacked records to prove what their operations were worth. Discouraged by the red tape and untrained for other pursuits, many of the Asian immigrants are competing for limited manual work in other people's operations.

Ever since the French built a gun battery along the bayou here in the 18th century, Bayou La Batre has seen change at the hands of nature. Storms seem to mark turning points for the town. It was known after the Civil War as a coastal resort with fine hotels and even an opera house. It had a large French-speaking population.

Then came damaging hurricanes in 1906 and 1916, and the resorts did not survive. Fishing brought it back, but now the seafood processing plants that were the town's largest employer have shut down. And prospects for a rebirth of that industry are not good.

So where is the town headed now? Perhaps, in a way, back to its past.

Even before the hurricane, city leaders were looking for ways to lessen the town's dependence on the seafood industry. The city council chambers were lined with sketches of a developer's plan to turn the town into a French-style village along the Bayou. Those plans are on hold, but some believe they may be just what Bayou La Batre needs.

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