WEST SHIP ISLAND, Miss. — The sun was shining, the waves were inviting and the sand was soft, but Cassie Cox gazed forlornly Saturday at row upon row of unrented, still-furled beach umbrellas on what is usually the busiest holiday weekend of the year.
“This is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Cox, who had rented only a dozen umbrellas to beachgoers all morning. “Last year at this time, we had more than 1,000 people here.”
Long known as a jewel of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, this three-mile barrier island was pristine until three days ago. Now, oily ribbons, tarlike pellets and sludge patties are spoiling the sugar-sand beach, marking another victim of the BP oil spill. Cleanup crews have yet to arrive.
“The entire coastline of the island has oil on it,” warned Patrick Hatcher, a National Park Service ranger who greets visitors from the ferry. “If you walk on the beach, you will get oil on you. If you swim in the ocean, you will get oil on you.”
Similar warnings cast a grim pall over the July 4 weekend at near-empty resorts and beachfront communities from Florida to Louisiana. In some areas, tourist bureaus, rental agents, condo owners and other officials said vacation bookings were down 20 percent to 80 percent.
Some resorts have slashed prices, waived cancellation fees, organized free concerts and stepped up non-beach attractions, such as bayou tours or casinos. And the oil is fickle, sullying some areas and missing others.
In Gulfport, Miss., organizers shifted the annual Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo to freshwater ponds and bayous because federal officials put nearly all the offshore fishing areas off limits for anglers. Fishing is now banned along the entire Mississippi coastline.
Officials in Alabama canceled annual fireworks displays in Bayou La Batre and on Dauphin Island, where a once-popular beach has been converted into a staging area for oil cleanup crews.
In Westwego, La., families who operate a decades-old clutch of 21 roadside seafood stalls, worried that they may not survive the summer.
“This is a ghost town,” stall operator Ivis Fernandez, 43, said in frustration. “Usually we’re so packed now that the police come to direct traffic. We’re really struggling.”
Only a handful of customers drove up all morning to buy the often still-squirming bounty of the Gulf from coolers — shrimp, soft shell crabs, catfish, snapping turtle, alligator and more.
“A lot of people are scared,” said Brandi Bryant, 37, who works at another stall. “They ask us all day long if there’s oil or dispersant on the shrimp. I tell them the Board of Health comes here and we couldn’t sell it if it was bad.”
Seven of the stands, including Who-Dat Seafood and the Crab Shack, already have closed, at least for now.
Only 80 people boarded the Capt. Pete, the ferry that carries passengers across the wave-tossed Mississippi Sound to West Ship Island, 11 miles offshore, early Saturday.
“Normally, we’d run three boats and carry 800, 900 people,” said Beth Skrmetta, whose family has run the ferries since the 1920s. “This is a disaster. We’re running a skeleton crew. I don’t know how much longer we can keep going.”
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