I'm just putting this up for personal reference. 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/26/BALCTHUJR.DTL

Oil spill hits poor anglers hardest

Monday, November 26, 2007

Two days after the Cosco Busan spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay, Khamnoi Vilaikam grabbed his fishing poles and drove to one of his favorite spots: a shoreline minutes away from his home in Richmond.

Vilaikam, a Laotian American, had not yet heard about the ship's accident. He'd been working long hours at a factory job, and when he set up his angling gear near the east end of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, it was nighttime - too dark to see any cleanup vessels that might have remained on the water.

Only when Vilaikam returned home that Friday night, and he and a son had eaten some of the fish they had caught, did Vilaikam watch a TV newscast and realize the bay was polluted by oil that killed birds, shut down beaches and prompted state officials to consider a ban on bay fishing.

Vilaikam, one of scores of subsistence fishers in the Bay Area, hasn't fished in the bay since.

"I got fish - striper bass," said Vilaikam. "The fish was OK. We come and eat. After that, they said it was an oil spill. After that, we didn't go."

Subsistence fishers - low-income anglers often from immigrant communities - rely on their catches to feed themselves and their family. On a single outing, Vilaikam can take in more than 30 fish - enough to last him, his wife and their three children for a week. In the wake of the oil spill, Vilaikam and other subsistence fishers have abandoned their usual places along the bay for rivers and waterways in the outer regions of the greater Bay Area. Vilaikam has gone as far as the Russian River to fish.

Although subsistence anglers usually work out of the public view, state agencies are aware of them, and after the oil spill, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment issued advisories on its Web site in Cambodian, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese and Spanish - but not Lao, the primary language of Laotian Americans such as Vilaikam.

David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, calls subsistence fishers a "transient population" that includes undocumented workers who fish in out-of-the-way areas to avoid being detected by Fish and Game wardens, who make spot checks to see if the anglers have fishing permits. Lewis, whose organization has studied subsistence fishing in the Bay Area, said state and local bodies could do a better job of reaching out to the fishers in their native languages.

"It's an issue that still doesn't get enough attention," Lewis said. "But given who the population is, I think they're always going to get less attention and services than people with money and people who vote."

The number of subsistence fishers in the Bay Area is difficult to gauge, but their numbers aren't limited to immigrant communities, said Sharon Fuller, executive director of the Ma'at Youth Academy, an environment-oriented organization in Richmond. Low-income African Americans, she said, are among the Bay Area's subsistence anglers.

For the Thanksgiving Day meal he shared with family and friends, Vilaikam cooked several fish he recently reeled in, including a large catfish he caught near Suisun City.

Vilaikam, who has a fishing permit and legally moved to the United States in 1988, said fishing gives him unbridled joy. He often brings his wife and at least one of his children, and aside from greatly reducing his grocery bill, fishing lets him be in nature and provides a respite from his factory work. Since he arrived in the United States, Vilaikam has worked on and off in factories and warehouses that package electronics, candy sets and other goods.

"Right now, I work six and seven days a week," said Vilaikam, standing in his backyard, where he grows vegetables. "Fishing is fun. When you go out, you're happy."

In the weeks ahead, Vilaikam said he will return to his usual spot by the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. He has other favorite areas, including one by Marin County's Rodeo Beach, where he goes crabbing at night. Besides crab and catfish, Vilaikam likes mussels, which he finds under, and on, shoreline rocks around the bay. He and his family cook their fish on grills, slice it and mix it with lettuce for fish salad, and use it in other creative ways.

Vilaikam said he and his son didn't get sick from eating the bay fish they caught two days after the oil spill. And he said neither he nor his family members have gotten ill from their heavy intake of fish, despite government warnings that an over-consumption of bay fish in general could be dangerous because they contain potentially high levels of toxic chemicals.

Sometimes, Vilaikam said, he gets itchy skin from fishing, but he attributes that to irritants in the water he wades in with his fishing pole. He said his 11-year-old daughter gets itchy skin when she eats too much fish or crab.

Vilaikam, who also shoots game birds for food, said he earns about $2,000 a month after taxes from his factory work. When he subtracts the money that goes for Medicare, rent, gasoline for his car, fishing equipment and other costs, he's left with little. Growing up in northern Laos, Vilaikam fished for fun with his father. Now, with his father and mother living with him in Richmond, Vilaikam fishes so they don't go hungry.

The Cosco Busan oil spill has affected him, he said, but he and his family have learned to survive much bigger upheavals.

"In Laos, it was war - we had to run out," he said. "It's good here. My family is happy."