Tracy Woody heaved a hemp bag filled with oysters across the deck of his boat and began inspecting his catch. One shell after another was empty.
It's virtually official, Woody said: the third-worst drought in state history has killed any hope that Texas oysters would make up for the severe losses in Mississippi and Louisiana, where the shellfish suffered from last year's oil spill and this year's massive flooding.
"There's no way," said Woody, a fifth-generation oyster fisherman who says he has never seen conditions this bad.
Oysters are a $217 million industry on the Gulf Coast. Louisiana and Texas account for 70 percent of the eastern species found in the Gulf and along the East Coast. Pessimism about the harvest this season is growing, even though experts won't offer a specific projection.
This year, the drought has made the water in Texas' Galveston Bay, where most of the state's oysters are harvested, so salty that predators and disease are thriving. Conditions are so dire, the deadly "dermo" parasite has been found in two reefs where it's never been seen before.
Combined with the losses in the southeastern states, consumers may be hard-pressed to find Gulf Coast oysters this year.
"There's not going to be enough oysters, the price is going to go through the roof and the consumers are not going to pay," Woody said, as workers threw hemp sacks of oysters onto wooden pallets.
Shrimp and blue crabs may also be affected by the drought. Shrimp has the biggest share of Texas' commercial fishing business, with $236 million in revenue in 2009; oysters are right behind, pulling in some $28 million in 2009, an off-year because of Hurricane Ike and other factors.
Galveston Bay has not experienced such high salinity since at least the 1980s, said Lance Robinson, regional director of the coastal fisheries division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "This is unprecedented," he said.
In normal years, rain in Central and North Texas fills the rivers and streams. The fresh water flows down to the Gulf and mixes with saltwater in the bays and estuaries. This environment allows oysters to thrive and reproduce. This year, there has been less than six inches of rain on average in Texas, compared to 13 inches normally.
Like The Apprentice, the show has the perfect formula. But it desperately wanted another old dragon, mostly to rival the Grumpy Old Woman, or Deborah Meaden, as her family call her.
Last night the dragon was unveiled as Hilary Devey and what a magnificent creature, an amazing CREATION, she was.
She arrived dressed in a black pencil skirt and a white jacket bearing the biggest shoulder pads seen on television since The Colbys. They were so wide she looked like a quarterback from the Dallas Cowboys who was into cross-dressing.
The Den’s answer to Bette Davis, Ms Devey is as thin as a bird, a glamorous scarecrow fashioned from two brooms, a wig, lashings of lipstick, pearls and some Alexander McQueen.
With her wobbly fringe and fabulous pins, she resembles a flamingo in drag.
Her voice is a smoky growl that suggests she exists on a diet of cigarillos.
A woman who has made a ￡100million fortune from road haulage (not presumably, driving the lorry herself, although you wouldn’t put it past her), Devey is a woman who is Not To Be Messed With. She makes Deborah Meaden look like Mavis Riley.
She has (thankfully) replaced James Caan – the suave silver dragon who used to spend each show thoughtfully stroking his beard and never investing.
But surprisingly, Meaden’s response to her Jurassic adversary was to become uncharacteristically girlish.
“Did you just say ‘splashback’?” she squealed to a man who claimed to have revolutionised male urination by chucking a lump of what looked like coal at the bottom of the toilet. “My God man, it’s your job to have that information,” Hilary snarled at the next innovator, jabbing bony claws weighed down by rings the size of ice cubes at him.
“You would make my foot itch,” she hissed. It could have been “make my butt itch.” I was too busy running for cover.