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Offshore, the warming ocean has depleted once-expansive kelp forests around the Channel Islands and has thrown oyster, crab and urchin harvests into disarray.

"Spillway openings are strongly associated with increased oyster, crab and other fisheries production in Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne for several years after the flood events."

More than 70 percent of that catch came, not from ocean fisheries, but from coastal oyster, crab or shrimp - and not all of it wild.

In an interview in Wittman’s Capitol Hill office, which is painted aqua and decorated with blue fish and trout he caught in the bay, Wittman credited the EPA program with renewing oyster, crab and fish populations — and said he will fight for federal funding to stay at current levels.

After all, Louisiana alone pulls in some 6 million metric tons of seafood per decade, and Terrebonne Parish, which encompasses Cocodrie, is responsible for 20 percent of the state's oyster, crab and shrimp harvest.