Vietnamese, Cambodian fishermen among hardest hit by BP oil spill

Local shrimper Can Van Nguyen sits as local Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen try to get information at the China Sea Restaurant in Buras, Louisiana. Local translators came to the meeting to help with the language barrier. (Sean Gardner/Reuters)

Many Vietnamese and Cambodia fishermen are without work now because of the BP oil spill, and some still feel the effects of Hurricane Katrina. BP is trying to help, but there's a language barrier.

May 8, 2010
By Bill Sasser, Correspondent
The Christian Science Monitor

Buras, Louisiana — While the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has idled hundreds of fishing boats in coastal Louisiana, the disaster has hit the close knit community of Vietnamese and Cambodian shrimpers in Plaquemines Parish particularly hard.

“I don’t know how I’m going to pay my car insurance,” Cung “Kim” Tran, a deckhand on a commercial fishing boat, declared at a community meeting Thursday at the China Sea Restaurant in the town of Buras. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay the note on my car or my house. Can you tell me what to do?”

Attended by BP representatives, parish officials, a regional United Way director, and over a hundred local fishermen, the meeting was called by Spencer Aronfeld, a personal injury and malpractice lawyer from Miami, Florida, who arrived in the parish earlier in the week.

“When I read in the news about the contracts BP asked residents to sign before they went to work, I couldn’t stand by and let that happen,” said Mr. Aronfeld. “I felt obligated to help. I contacted BP myself and brought in the United Way and said we need to have a meeting and start feeding people.”

The contract Aronfeld referred to was a liability waiver local residents were asked to sign to enroll in safety and hazardous materials handling courses, required by BP for paid jobs containing and cleaning up the oil spill. The waiver caused much distrust and confusion in Plaquemines Parish. Many thought they would be signing away their rights to file claims over the spill, and the form was soon dropped.

Communication with Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen in the parish has been particularly difficult for the oil company. While BP has translators on hand at most meetings, an early version of the waivers were written in English only.

Language barrier
“I don’t see how in good conscience BP could ask immigrants who do not speak English to sign away their rights with a contract written only in English, particularly for work as dangerous as this,” said Aronfeld.

Aronfeld, who went on local radio to publicize the meeting, is among dozens of lawyers who have come to south Louisiana since the oil well disaster started.

Earlier this week, a federal judicial panel in Washington was asked to consolidate at least 65 potential class-action lawsuits that claim economic damage from the spill. Fishermen, charter boat captains, business owners, and vacationers filed suit across the Gulf coast seeking damages that could reach into the billions.

While local television and radio is filled with advertisements by attorneys seeking clients affected by the spill, Aronfeld has taken on the role of grassroots organizer among the Asian immigrants of Plaquemines Parish.

“It pains me to see how they are living, with many people still in FEMA trailers from Katrina,” he said. “They are a proud people and have endured a lot, but they are suffering now and need to be taken care of. I’m not sure I’m working as an attorney or as a civil rights activist.”

BP apologized...again
At the community meeting in Buras, grandmothers held babies and fishermen stood impatiently in rubber work boots as David Kinnaird, community outreach spokesman for BP, made another apology for any confusion BP caused with the liability waivers.

“We recognize we’ve been having problems communicating with people in this parish and I’m here to make sure that everyone is heard and listened to,” said Kinnaird, his presentation translated into Vietnamese and Cambodian by two local residents.

Parish officials and United Way representative also provided locations in the parish where charities are distributing food, announced that a local Methodist church will soon be handing out $100 checks to out-of-work families, and announced the establishment of a United Way effort to help local fishermen.

The room remained silent when they were asked if anyone present was worried about eating that night, but anger quickly flashed at Aronfeld, who started a question and answer period by admonishing local residents against hostility, shouting, or threats about lawsuits or claims.

“We are normal people! We are not animals! Talk to us like we are human beings!” one obviously upset fisherman shouted at Aronfeld, who profusely apologized.

Despite repeated promises by BP to quickly help fisherman in the region, many at the meeting complained of being caught in a Catch-22 of bureaucracy: BP is only accepting claims of economic loss from boat owners, not deckhands, and the company’s Vessel of Opportunity employing boatmen to fight the oil spill is only hiring fisherman who can prove their local residency.

Many Asian immigrants who have worked in Plaquemines for decades do not own their own boats. Many also moved to New Orleans after losing their homes to Hurricane Katrina, but still return to Plaquemines everyday to work.

Katrina's lasting impact
“Since Katrina there is no school here for our kids, so we had to move to New Orleans,” said shrimper Houston Le, 40. “But I still come here every day, even now with the fishing closed I am coming, but BP says it is only hiring people they say live in Plaquemines.”

BP spokesperson Kinnaird said he would get answers, and referred residents to BP’s phone number for claims, pointing out that translators are available on the toll-free line. Thoai Tong, a fisherman who is acting as an interpreter for Aronfeld, estimated that out of the 3,000 immigrants from Southeast Asia living and working in Plaquemines, about ten percent are fluent in English.

“When you say to them ‘BP gives you an opportunity,’ they say ‘what is opportunity?’” says Tong, who came to the U.S. in 1980 from a refugee camp in Thailand, when he was 2 years old.

Many of the fisherman work out of the nearby Buras marina, where their boats rock idly. “My boat is my house, my life, right here,” said Toan Nguyen said from the deck of his shrimp boat. “There’s no oil here but they won’t let us fish.”

When the wholesale price of shrimp dropped to 50 cents a pound last season, Nguyen and other shrimpers went on a strike, which had little effect due to a flood of cheap Asian imports. With rumors of price collusion among wholesalers, state officials had promised fishermen better prices this year, but the season was canceled before it started because of the spill.

“Last year a lot of people went broke, so this year everyone was counting on this season to make some money,” said Nguyen.

Nearly five years after Katrina, Buras remains an isolated community with no doctor, no school, no pharmacy, and no grocery store. After the hurricane, the local diocese closed the Catholic church many in the Asian community had attended.

“If this continues with the fishing being closed, everyone will have to move to New Orleans and on one will be left down here,” said interpreter Tong, who is still waiting for his Road Home grant to rebuild his house in Buras, boarded up since the 2005 storm.

Plenty of lawyers
While the Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen are having trouble communicating with BP, they are having no problems finding lawyers to talk with.

“They come here and go to meetings and drive around and walk up and asking you if they need a lawyer to represent you,” said Tong. “Spencer is a lawyer and we want to see him actually helping the community, and then maybe we will sign up with him.”

The area has previous experience with litigation over smaller oil spills. During Hurricane Katrina, nearly a million gallons of oil spilled from ruptured pipelines in nearby Empire, Louisiana, an incident that became part of a larger class action lawsuit.

“Many people signed papers with lawyers and they’ve never heard anything back,” Tong recalls. “You ask them who their lawyer is and they don’t know, they don’t even have a card. You ask them why they signed up and they say ‘well, everyone else was signing up.’”

[US Gulf Coast] Oil spill takes toll on Cambodian, Vietnamese fishermen

Families attend a meeting with BP officials in Buras, La. Interpreters were on hand for some Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants. Language barriers have stunted outreach efforts by BP. (Sachi Cunningham / Los Angeles Times / May 7, 2010)

With their boats docked and livelihoods in limbo, frustrated families meet with BP officials and hope for answers.

May 7, 2010
By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Buras, La.

About 2,000 Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants in this remote bayou community — mostly families that have staked their American livelihoods on shrimping and fishing — have found themselves isolated by more than just vast stretches of swampland since the gulf oil spill disaster.

Language barriers have made it even more difficult for them to be plugged into the latest information about temporary jobs offered by BP after thousands of fishermen like themselves have been put out of work by the oil spill.

About 200 of them gathered Thursday in a sweltering bayou restaurant, trying to contain their frustrations as a BP representative, flanked by interpreters, urged them to enroll in the company's paid cleanup programs.

The programs were designed to help create a line of defense along the nation's richest fishing grounds and to provide some income to grounded fishermen.

But BP spokesman David Kinnaird offered little in the way of immediate help. He said that the company had hired enough workers for the time being but that the fishermen could get on the waiting list.

The fishermen said they were more concerned with what BP could do to remedy their immediate cash flow problems after fishing was banned on Sunday for at least 10 days. Federal waters from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Pensacola, Fla., are off-limits.

"We need money to pay bills and buy food," said Benjamin Truongo, 48, who has been plying local marshes for two decades.

Kinnaird said BP planned to set up a claims office in nearby Venice, La. "If the claims are legitimate and can be properly documented, they will be paid promptly," he said.

Meanwhile, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said at a news conference Thursday that the company would pay claims regardless of a $75-million cap established by federal law. He said checks had already gone out.

As in many other Gulf Coast fishing communities, Buras' marinas were filled with docked boats while its residents' livelihoods were in limbo.

"Many of these people do not speak English, so they don't understand what kind of assistance is available, and they are scared," said Billy Nungesser, Plaquemines Parish president. "Just the other day, a 94-year-old fisherman, who has his wits about him and looks forward to taking his vessel into the marsh each day, said, 'Mr. Billy. Please help. What do I do?' I didn't know what to tell him."

The meeting was organized by local officials and Miami attorney Spencer Aronfeld to allow BP officials to answer concerns from people such as Chuck Nguyen, 35.

"I haven't worked in four months because the oil spill hit at about the same time as the start of the new fishing season, which runs from May through December," he said. "I borrowed a few thousand dollars from a relative who was only a little better off than me."

But what Nguyen and other fishermen heard from Kinnaird and a representative from United Way was that they would have to be patient.

They were also told that applications for the cleanup programs would be translated into Cambodian and Vietnamese.

Kinnaird said BP had already signed up about 700 boat owners in Louisiana and Mississippi to scoop crude out of fouled waters and deploy booms. "We'll let you know if we need more later," he said.

"These people got nothing but words and empty promises," Aronfeld said.

In the meantime, shrimp boat captain Hung T. Le, 48, kills time, wondering when he will be able to take his 40-foot vessel, Southern Lady, back into the marsh.

"She's so sad just sitting there with an empty shrimp box. I can't wait for work much longer."

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

“I don’t know how long I can keep fishing ... There are hardly any fish now”: Les Sofi, Tonle Sap fisherman

Muslims on Tonle Sap See Fishing Threat

By Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
05 June 2009

Wrapped only in a sarong, under a cool breeze on the Tonle Sap river, Les Sofi slowly rowed his boat, extending his fish net beneath the surface of the water.

Les Sofi started fishing when he was a boy. “Fishing has been my daily task,” said the 25-year-old Cham fisherman, in Prek Raing village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. “I once could return home with 10 or 20 kilograms of fish each day.”

The number of fish Les Sofi could catch would earn his family 10 between $10 and $12.50 per day.

In two villages of Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district, some 500 Cambodian Muslim families earn their livings by fishing. Several years ago, they come home with at least 10 kilograms of fish per day, found on the Tonle Sap river.

But that number is falling, and now some of them are turning to jobs on plantations or as motorcycle taxi drivers. Fishing communities all along the Tonle Sap, one of the richest lake systems in the world, have begun to see dwindling catches.

Like other fishermen in these river villages, Les Sofi said he had thought of abandoning his traditional job thanks to a dramatic decline in catches over the last several years.

“Before, there were riches in fish, but now I can hardly catch even a kilo of fish a day,” he said with a sad look.

Another fisherman, Sou Matt, 57, gave up his fishing three years ago because of a decline in his catches.

“The reason why the number of fish is falling is that there has been the widespread use of illegal fishing equipment,” explained the former fisherman, who has turned to work on a plantation.

Along the bank, on the other side of the Tonle Sap, Matt Man said he has also abandoned his family tradition career.

“I have now changed my job to work as a moto taxi driver,” said the 49-year-old. “I could no longer stand searching for more fish when there were none in the water.”

The village chief Re Mouse said at his house that most of the Cham fishermen in his village have sold their boats to buy motorcycles and turned to on-land jobs.

About 90 percent of the 430 families in Village Two are Muslim fishermen, according to the village chief.

Some fishermen claim that the falling number of fish in the river is due to the use of large-scale fishing equipment, especially during fishing bans between June and October.

Minister of Agriculture Chan Sarun and the head of its fishery administration, Nao Thuok, could not be reached for comment for this story.

The director of Phnom Penh’s fishery administration, Pen Phannarith, nonetheless, said he has constantly sent out his officials to monitor and deal with illegal acts of fishery.

“There have been no fishery offenses so far along the Tonle Sap river, from the outskirt of the city inwards,” he said, adding that he would start to monitor more closely next week.

Still, Les Sofi said he would not continue his tradition of fishing should his current catches remain so low.

“I don’t know how long I can keep fishing,” he said. “There are hardly any fish now.”