purchase

It starts with the boots

Any self-respecting commercial fisher in Louisiana has them. They're white and they're rubber. We don't exactly know why "white." Word has it that they were the cheapest on the market so they just kinda' made sense. In any case, they have become an icon of an industry, an icon of the many cultures whose citizens forage a living from wild creatures swimming in the open waters of coastal Louisiana. Whether you're a Croatian oysterman, Islaños crabber, or Vietnamese shrimper, white boots are on your feet. For those of us who don't fish but like the boots, what a marvelous way to show solidarity with the families who are struggling to survive in this rugged economy. Here are a few suggestions of where you can order yourself a pair of white boots:

QC Supply
Shoe Buy

The following commercial fishers meet our White Boot Brigade triple bottom-line criteria. They pursue sustainable harvesting methods, protect Louisiana's traditional fishing culture, and embrace entrepreneurial innovation and high quality customer service practices. In other words, they are ready to do business directly with the outside world:

Anna Marie Seafood — Lance Nacio

annamarieseafood.com 985.209.2862 annamarieseafood@charter.net
Shrimper Lance Nacio hails from bayou country southwest of New Orleans near Dulac, Louisiana. Driven by his mission to "provide the American public with quality wild caught free range shrimp free of any antibiotics caught fresh in water off the coast of Louisiana, Lance has joined forces with Bluewater Shrimp Company, utilizing their prime location and "state of the art" Individual Quick Freezing machinery to lock in the freshness of each individual shrimp. The I.Q.F. process flash freezes each shrimp in their original state of freshness.




Four Winds Seafood — Kay and Ray Brandhurst

Four Winds Seafood 504.228.8038 www.fourwindsseafood.com

Ray Brandhurst has only wanted to be a shrimper his whole life. He grew up in Orleans Parish and spent his childhood around the Rigolets (French for gutter or trench) on shrimp docks. Perhaps it’s in his blood. Shrimping stretches back over seven generations in his family. In the 1700s, his ancestors were fishermen in the Basque region of Spain.

For over five-years, his wife and business partner Kay has been a star vendor at the Crescent City Farmers Market. Prior to each Market day, she meets Ray at the dock where he unloads fresh and IQF (Individual Quick Frozen) shrimp and bycatch (the calamari and finfish that also get scooped up by the trauling nets). With ice chests loaded onto their delivery truck, Kay heads to the farmers market with products to dazzle the food-obsessed shoppers.

Prior to Katrina, the Brandhursts lived just down-river from New Orleans in Chalmette with the family of four kids, near where Ray docked his 50-foot trawler named “Four Seasons.” He built it by hand. After the storm did its damage, the boat sat in eight feet of water for weeks at the bottom of Bayou Bienvenue. It was retrieved from the water by a crane. Between trawling on smaller boats and in cooperation with fishermen who used to be his competition, Ray has been repairing the damage himself, everything from puttying the haul to rewiring his control panel.

Living in a cramped apartment upriver from New Orleans in the community of Metairie, the Brandhursts continue to trawl for shrimp, IQF on board, handle and grade the sizes, and ship amazing product on demand. Having lost their house, processing facility and shop in Chalmette, they spend much of their time “negotiating” with insurance companies.

Gerica Seafood — Pete and Clara Gerica

Gerica Seafood 504.669.4379

Clara Gerica, her husband Pete and her daughter Christine rode out Hurricane Katrina in their home in New Orleans East with Pet’s mother and dog. They remained to protect their investments from the severe effects of the storm — boats and gear. When Katrina’s eye wall traveled over their property, the roof of their two-story house blew off. The floors collapsed and their daughter was sucked out of the window. Soon, all family members were separated and floating in tumultuous high water for nearly 12 hours.

One by one, Pete was able to put his survival skills to work and find his mother, her dog, his daughter, and then finally his wife Clara. They lost nearly everything, including a waterproof safe containing a signficant sum of cash, important documents and family jewelry. Their home was destroyed, as were two of their three boats and their processing facility – something Clara used every week to clean fish and peel shrimp for her customers at the Crescent City Farmers Market.

She, like Kay Brandhurst, had found innovative ways to add value to the husband’s harvest by processing the product and selling it directly to consumers.

Born into a Croatian oyster family, husband Pete has been shrimping, fishing, and crabbing for 37 years. Croatian immigrants have dominated the Louisiana oyster industry since the 1880s. When he was fifteen, Pete bought his first 14-foot Ciscraft boat. In 1979 he built “Ms. Lucy” a Lafitte skiff by hand. The same year he married Clara (both in formal dress and white boots) and they settled in New Orleans East on Bayou Sauvage. A rugged fighter for fishermen’s rights, Pete split his time as a member of several important organizations (president of the Lake Pontchartrain Commercial Fishermen’s Association and vice-president of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board). These days, he spends much of his time fighting insurance companies who representatives balk at paying to repair the Gericas’ home. Add insult to injury, he severely damaged his hand while restoring Ms. Lucy. He will not be shrimping this season; however, Clara has traveled up to New York City to lend her moral support to the Brigade. Pete and Clara Gerica can be reached via telephone at 504.669.4379.