The Gulf of Mexico is known for its bounty — blue crab, shrimp, grouper, tuna, oysters — but ever since oil tainted a portion of the Gulf’s fishing grounds, the seafood has been a tough sell.

Even though much of the oil that spilled from last April’s Deepwater Horizon rig explosion has been cleaned up, the future is still murky for people who make a living plying Gulf waters.

Mike Voisin is a seventh-generation Louisiana oysterman.

“Once it was capped, everybody brought out that proverbial sigh of relief, like ‘Whew, we’re through this thing.’ Well we weren’t, and we still aren’t,” Voisin says.

Voisin is president of Motivatit Seafoods, an oyster processing company in Houma, La. His workers are shucking oysters mostly from Texas these days.

The Biggest Challenge

Before the spill, Louisiana produced half of the oysters sold from the Gulf. Voisin’s business was down 60 percent after the spill, and it has been slow to recover. The state’s fisheries are projected to lose $74 million this year from the lingering impact of the oil spill.

“People are hesitant to buy Gulf shrimp or Gulf product coming out of this oil area,” says Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham.

Most oyster grounds are open again. But they’re not producing nearly what they did before, in part because of damage caused by flushing freshwater out of the Mississippi River to hold the oil at bay.

But Voisin says the main problem is that customers are afraid.

“The brand for the seafood community is the biggest challenge that we’re faced with,” he says.

A recent survey of restaurants around the country conducted by Greater New Orleans Inc. shows just how bad the perception is. The economic development group’s president, Michael Hecht, says twice as many people now ask about the origin of seafood.

“The implication of course is they’re asking about whether it’s from the Gulf or whether it’s Louisiana seafood,” Hecht says.

He says 50 percent of people surveyed nationally now have an unfavorable view of Louisiana seafood. That’s a huge swing from a 73 percent favorable view before the spill.

They plan to fight back with a national ad campaign paid for with BP money.

The state of Alabama is already doing that with a new Serve the Gulf campaign.

Seafood Testing

The federal government is also trying to get the word out.

“Test results have been unequivocal. Gulf seafood is safe to eat,” says Eric Schwaab, head of fisheries at NOAA.

At the agency’s lab in Pascagoula, Miss., sensory analysts spend their days bending over Pyrex dishes and smelling the fish inside for the slightest whiff of oil.

Then they’ll have a taste. Seafood samples are also chemically analyzed for hydrocarbons and the dispersant BP sprayed on the oil slick. NOAA’s Walt Dickhoff says they’ve analyzed more than 5,000 samples and all have passed at margins 100 to 1,000 times below levels of concern.

“This is the most tested seafood in history. I’m completely confident it’s safe, it’s not contaminated,” Dickhoff says.

But others aren’t so convinced.

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David Grunfeld / The Times-Picayune

If your idea of a good time involves consuming freshly shucked Louisiana oysters by the dozen, preferably with an elbow propped against a local raw bar, you’re no doubt happier today than you were in May or June of 2010.

Those were the dog-hard days of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, back when Louisiana oysters were so hard to come by that local oyster bars were shutting down and cutting back hours, oyster distributors were ceasing normal operations and traditional Louisiana seafood restaurants were turning to Oregon and Connecticut for their bivalves — or eliminating them from their menus entirely.

Nearly a year after the April 20 explosion aboard the BP oil rig that unleashed the spill, killing 11 people, the situation is much less dire, at least from the diner’s standpoint. (The story is more complicated for Louisiana oyster fishers and distributors, who are not out of the woods.) Raw bars are shucking all over town. Louisiana oysters have resumed their position as the norm — and when the oysters are not local, they almost certainly are comparable products from the coasts of Texas or Mississippi.

Granted, this news is not going to make all mouths water. Results of a recent study released by Greater New Orleans Inc. revealed that the spill still makes consumers uneasy about the safety of Gulf seafood. Of the 180 people who responded to a NOLA.com poll last week, 55 percent indicated they have yet to resume eating Gulf seafood of any kind since the disaster.

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GRAND ISLE, La. — Biologist John Supan thinks he has developed what may be the holy grail for oyster lovers: a hardy breed of the delectable shellfish that stays fat enough for consumers to eat throughout the year.

And unlike many oysters across the Gulf Coast, ruined by BP’s massive oil spill and the fresh water poured in to fight it, Supan’s oysters are all alive.

Now, nearly four months after the spill, Supan’s oysters may offer the Gulf oyster industry a chance for a better long-term recovery. But his special breed of modified oysters, which some say are prohibitively expensive, could be a hard sell to an industry reeling from the BP disaster.

Most oystermen agree that few oysters will be harvested from the Gulf Coast in the next year or two, signaling a potential calamity for shucking houses, oyster farmers and people who love a half dozen oysters on the half shell. As much as 65 percent of the nation’s oysters come from the Gulf.

Oysters are particularly susceptible to pollution, taking longer than fish or shrimp to clear oil contamination from their bodies.

Supan’s oysters are bred for performance, making them more fit to deal with viruses and other contaminants. Being sterile, they don’t go through the stress of reproduction, so they stay fat and juicy all year round. Supan says his oysters are sweet, plump and meaty in summertime when other oysters become thin and watery.

But the most crucial advantage this year was their mobility.

Unlike the vast majority of oysters in the Gulf, which spend their lives on the bottoms of bays and sounds, Supan’s oysters dangle in the water in cages at a hatchery on the inland side of this island.

When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20 just a few dozen miles from his hatchery, the 57-year-old Louisiana State University oyster biologist evacuated his broods to a research hatchery in Alabama and a wildlife preserve in western Louisiana. Then he brought them back.

“In my opinion, this is the most important brood of oysters in the history of the Gulf of Mexico,” Supan says. “But you know, you ask an oysterman that and they will say, ‘Huh?’”

He said the day is coming when all the Gulf’s oystermen will know what he’s talking about.

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In this July 1, 2010 picture, Louisiana State University assistant research professor John Supan inspects algae growing tanks used to feed oyster larvae in his bivalve hatchery at the Louisiana Wildlife and FIsheries Laboratory in Grand Isle, La. Unlike traditional oysters that spawn and get skinny in the summer, Supan has developed sterile, “super” crossbreeds that remain fat, making them one of the best hopes for restoring Louisiana’s oyster industry. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In this July 1, 2010 picture, sacks of oyster half shells carrying tiny oyster larvae are seen in a tank in a bivalve hatchery at the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Laboratory in Grand Isle, La. Unlike traditional oysters that spawn and get skinny in the summer, Louisiana State University assistant research professor John Supan has developed sterile, “super” crossbreeds that remain fat, making them one of the best hopes for restoring Louisiana’s oyster industry. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)