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By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS, June 12 (Reuters) – On the exterior, all seemed right with the world at the Louisiana Seafood Festival, by the aroma of grilled shrimp mingling with live Cajun Zydeco music and sweltering heat on the edge of the French Quarter.

But the intoxicating smells and sounds that make a certified copy of New Orleans only partly masked an underlying fear among restaurateurs promoting their dishes that the oil shed fouling the Gulf of Mexico will harm their business for years.

‘We made some boiled shrimp sausages — that’s one of our signature sausages — and no person’s buying it,’ Michael Cusimano, of Two Guys Sausage, said as he flipped a line of them on a grill behind his tent-wine on Saturday.

‘I can’t get into the psyche of the henchman, but is it because they’re scared of the shrimp? There’s going to have existence a substantial effect on the reputation of Louisiana seafood.’

The BP Plc oil effuse, now into its eighth week, has shut down fishing in a third part of the U.S. Gulf waters, turned many fishermen into oil fighters and, in the scan of the state’s seafood industry, turned many Americans away from their products.

This is defiance assurances from environmental and food safety authorities that seafood for opportunity to sell is good to eat — at least for now.

The crisis fit as the industry had put the devastation of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the rear of it. Based on catches before the spill, fishermen had expected a flowing bowl year.

At the festival, held in conjunction with celebrations of Zydeco science of harmonical sounds and Creole tomatoes, visitors partook in such signature dishes as okra, jambalaya and oyster po’ boys as well as goodies like shrimp remoulade wraps and try to catch ~ tacos.

It was equal parts promotion and therapy.

‘ALIVE AND KICKING’

‘We’re doing this day of rejoicing to honor the fishermen who have been put out of work and hopefully keep markets alive,’ said Ewell Smith, the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board’s executory director. ‘We’re letting people know we are alive and kicking.’

Some folks around the country mistakenly believe the Louisiana seafood sector, which supplies 30 percent of the United States, is shut down altogether, he said.

Indeed, Glenn Saltamachia, who had come from St. Louis, Missouri, toward a vacation was surprised to see seafood available at all, suffer alone as the centerpiece of a festival.

‘You hear things like the oyster distributor in the present life in New Orleans who had to let all of his rabble go. That made the national news, and of course everybody hears that and they reckon there won’t be any oysters,’ he said as he tucked into charbroiled oysters from Oceana Restaurant’s booth.

‘Well here they are. And they’re delicious.’

Still, supplies are tightening. New Orleans-based P&J Oysters, that has operated since 1876, stopped shucking this week due to shortcoming of supplies as the oyster beds it sources the bivalves from were close the door upon down, the New York Times reported.

A big worry is that the celebrity of Louisiana seafood, which helped fuel careers of such big-style chefs as Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse, will suffer long-christen damage.

‘The brand is just beaten to death right now. Around other districts of the country, we’re starting to see people back not upon on sales. Not so much here because people are so tuned into it,’ Smith uttered.

Kevin Bauer of Deanie’s Seafood said his business has nevertheless to take a major hit, but he expects the longer the crisis in the Gulf goes on, the bigger the impact.

‘The verity is, it’s going to have an effect on us bigtime. We’re hoping it doesn’t remain long, that people don’t have a negative image of us or our seafood for a long time,’ he said.

Deanie’s offered festival-goers the election of a chicken dish, just in case.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

((For full coverage of the spill, see http://link.reuters.com/hed87k)) Keywords: OIL SPILL/SEAFOOD

(jeff.jones@thomsonreuters.com; +1 403 531 1624; Reuters Messaging: jeff.jones.reuters.com@reuters.unadulterated)

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