Ernest Voisin’s great-great-great-grandfather came to Louisiana in 1770, drawn here from France by the region’s abundant fisheries.

The family has been part of Louisiana’s seafood industry ever since, says Voisin, president of Motivatit Seafoods, the Houma, La, oyster farming and processing company he founded in 1971. “My sons Mike and Steve work for the company, as do three of my grandsons. They’re the eighth generation of Voisins in the seafood business.”

The Voisins’ story is in many ways that of southern Louisiana. For more than three centuries, people have come to the coast to reap the region’s rich natural resources. The resources-based industries they developed remain vital parts of the state’s economy.

Abundant Fisheries Spawn Culture, Tourism

Early settlers of Louisiana’s coast established a fishing industry that remains vibrant to this day: More than a quarter of the nation’s seafood is harvested from the state’s coastal wetlands, bays and offshore waters.

Those settlers also brought with them the diverse influences that combined to create coastal Louisiana’s unique cultures and cuisine. Based largely around that culture, the coastal zone’s tourism industry today packs an economic wallop: in 2000 in the Barataria- Terrebonne estuary system, tourism brought in $1.2 billion and supported 14,000 jobs. On the coast, tourism, culture and fisheries are inextricably linked. “People come here from around the world to eat seafood, to fish, to experience things that are unique to our way of life — such as watching an oysterman harvest his crop,” says Motivatit Seafoods CEO Mike Voisin.

Fisheries

Economic value

$2.85 billion

Louisiana is by far the nation’s largest producer of shrimp, oysters and blue crab. The state’s coastal zone provides nearly a third by weight of fish harvested in the lower 48 U.S. states. In 2003, the retail value of the state’s commercial and recreational fisheries harvest was $2.85 billion.
USACE, New Orleans District

Employment

40,000 jobs

Based in the state's coastal wetlands, fisheries industries provide jobs for more than 40,000 Louisiana citizens.
USACE, New Orleans District

Tourism

Economic value

$10 billion in 2004

USACE, New Orleans District

Tourists Tourists spend billions in Louisiana each year, much of it on exploring the unique places and sampling the signature cuisine of the state’s coastal zone. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged wetlands and flooded coastal communities, tourism plummeted; statewide, travel expenditures dropped nearly 19 percent.

Source: Louisiana Office of Tourism

Employment

In Louisiana’s coastal parishes, the lodging and food service industries employ close to 110,000 people — about 13 percent of workers in the coastal zone, or 6 percent of total state employment in 2005.

In Louisiana’s coastal parishes, the lodging and food service industries employ close to 110,000 people — about 13 percent of workers in the coastal zone, or 6 percent of total state employment in 2005.

USACE, New Orleans District

In the New Orleans metropolitan area, the leisure and hospitality industry took a heavy hit following the 2005 hurricane season, losing nearly 25,000 jobs in late 2005 and 2006.

Sources: Louisiana Department of Labor; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Oil and Gas Create Coastal Jobs

After the first oil wells were drilled in the wetlands in the early 1900s, refineries sprang up along the coast. In 1939 an oil company installed the first offshore well, opening the Gulf of Mexico to the oil and gas industry. For the next 50 years the petroleum industry grew rapidly, contributing tax revenue to the state’s coffers and bringing an influx of workers to coastal communities.

Oil and gas

Economic value

Energy production figures are from 2003 and include the Outer Continental Shelf.

Employment

$2.7 billion
42,000 employees

Statewide, the oil and gas industry paid $2.7 billion in wages to some 42,000 employees, half of whom live and work in Louisiana’s coastal parishes.
Source: Louisiana Department of Labor
Photo: USACE, New Orleans District

Oil and gas exploration and drilling in deep offshore waters continue to rely on labor from communities along Louisiana’s coast. Fuel mined from the gulf is offloaded in Louisiana’s ports, processed at nearby refineries, and transported from the coastal zone to points across the United States.

Today more than 72,000 active oil wells spike the horizon in Louisiana’s coastal parishes.
USACE, New Orleans District

Diminishing coastal marshes increase the exposure of Louisiana’s commercial infrastructure, such as docks, marinas, and oil and gas facilities and pipelines, to strong waves and powerful currents from the Gulf of Mexico.
USACE, New Orleans District

Healthy Wetlands Key to Resources’ Survival

Sugar cane has been part of Louisiana’s coastal landscape for 200 years, but like the rest of the coast’s agricultural industry, sugar cane farming has changed dramatically in recent decades. “In Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes, urban growth and wetlands loss have pushed farmers farther north,” says Herman Waguespack, an agronomist for the American Sugar Cane League. “Land that used to be fields is now houses or marsh, and subdivisions and industry are claiming the better drained land, forcing agriculture onto poorer land.”

“The diverse economic activities of Louisiana’s coastal parishes rely on natural resources, and those resources depend on the wetlands,” says John Westra of Louisiana State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness.

Agriculture

Economic value

$1.7 billion

A fifth of the sugar produced in the United States comes from the sugar cane fields of southern Louisiana. As the state’s leading agricultural commodity, the crop has an annual economic impact of $1.7 billion.
Louisiana Department of Tourism

“Our wetlands provide habitat for the state’s fisheries, protect farmland from saltwater intrusion and attract tourists from around the world. Healthy marshes and barrier islands protect ports, communities, farms and oil and gas infrastructure from powerful storms,” Westra explains. “As we saw after the 2005 hurricanes, disruption in those wetland dependent industries ripples out across the entire nation’s economy.”

Today thousands of Louisiana residents work in industries linked to the coastal zone’s natural resources. Fishing, shipping, tourism and oil and gas production have a combined economic impact of approximately $140 billion each year, quantifying the economic value of the state’s working coast.