Gulf seafood is safe and for sale, but some fishmongers are pushing more risky foreign shrimp, crab and oysters.

Fifty-two days of oil gushing from the jagged remnants of the British Petroleum well, while devastating, has contaminated less than a third of the Gulf of Mexico fishery.

Nevertheless, there is growing fear among those catching, processing and selling the Gulf’s shell and fin fish that the nation’s fishmongers and restaurant suppliers may soon go to foreign waters for their seafood because they don’t understand that their products are both available and safe.

I’ve spent about three weeks talking to people who supply and ultimately cook those coveted saltwater delicacies from the docks of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

I found was that hundreds of samples of market-ready Gulf seafood have been and continue to be tested by about every government agency you can name. The testing uses both the highest-tech laboratory equipment and the carefully trained noses of human inspectors.

The conclusion so far is that the seafood being sold is free of contamination by oil and the little-understood chemical concoctions that make up the millions of gallons of dispersants dumped on the Gulf.

This rush to import from overseas, and replace what is still a steady source of safe Gulf seafood, could ravage a supply chain built over decades. But of greater public health concerns to many experts is that those who rush to foreign suppliers may not know (or may chose to ignore) the litany of FDA warnings over the years. Those warnings address harmful adulterants found in fish and crab, farmed shrimp and oysters from China and several other Asian countries.

The contaminants — some of which the FDA listed as carcinogenic – included a number of antimicrobial agents, disinfectants and drugs to combat diseases and parasites that often flourish in heavily overcrowded fish and shellfish pens.

What makes these imports more of a gamble is that FDA has the resources or desire to actually inspect only about 2 percent of the what’s entering our food supply.

I have long been a devoted fan of shellfish from the Gulf. The shrimp coming into Louisiana are more flavorful than almost anywhere else and the Blue Crab far larger and tastier than what can be found in the over-harvested waters of Maryland and Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay.

It’s clear that many folks are scared off by the very real, very bad news about the oil spill. The barrage of government revelations, political shin-kicking and British Petroleum’s hourly mea culpas make it easy to conclude that America’s prime spawning ground for seafood is shut down.

“That’s not even close to being accurate,” says Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. “About 70 percent of our coastline is open and oil-free,” he adds.

And Robbie Walker, owner of the Louisiana Seafood Exchange, who supplies shrimp, crab and oysters to more than 500 customers, told me a couple of days ago that he hasn’t been out of any products since BP’s Deepwater Horizon blew up, burned and sank in late April.

The shrimpers, crabbers and oystermen who fill his bubbling saltwater holding tanks and mammoth freezers have to work a lot harder finding clean, open, legal, oil-free water to pull their catch, he tells me in a voice that moves between anger, frustration and pride.

He’s paying everyone involved more for their extra effort and, like every other supplier and wholesaler, those costs get passed on to the end customer.

Across the country, diners from Florida to New England and Seattle are still lining up to be served most of their favorite Gulf seafood.

About 60 miles, as the crow flies, from the oily water of the Gulf, Earl Melancon gobbled down a Louisiana shrimp Po’ Boy and tells me how safe the local seafood is.

The professor of marine biology at Nicholls State University in in Thibodaux, La. specializes in shellfish.

He tells me he cooks and serves shrimp, crab and oysters to his children and grandchildren in enough different ways to fill a good cookbook. He sure wouldn’t allow his family to eat the local seafood if he any question at all about the safety, he adds.

It took a while to track down the documents showing the actual test results. But on Tuesday, Randy Pausina, Louisiana’s Assistant secretary for fisheries, sent me the report that showed that 7,974 samples of market-bound crab, shrimp, oysters and fin fish were tested as recently as Monday.

Scientists at his state’s Marine Fisheries Division found that none of the samples had detectable levels of hydrocarbons or other nasty stuff.

Meanwhile, about 17,000 men and women who earn their living from the Gulf have no clue what their future holds.

Prof. Melancon says that over his 35-years working in the field he has watched many times when the fishermen had their backs up against the wall, whether it be for economic or environmental reasons.

“I have always been amazed at how these fishing men and women could maintain their sense of humor and their unfathomable resiliency and determination to survive in times of crises,” he tells me.

Not now.

At a recent meeting of oystermen and state officials he says the mood and demeanor was the most somber, and sobering, that he’d ever witnessed.

“There were no smiles, no joking with one another and virtually no small talk among themselves. Their facial expressions metamorphose to sadness and despair, not anger,” as seafood marketing experts told them how the rest of the nation is viewing Louisiana seafood.

The battle to regain the confidence of consumers is going to be long and hard.

Here is a link to another story that I did today for my real employer, AOL News.

–Andrew Schneider

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