Florida vacations are suffering... Resorts and beachfronts from Florida to Louisiana were nearly empty this Independence Day weekend as Gulf of Mexico oil washed ashore and amid seafood scares.
"This is the saddest thing I've ever seen," Cassie Cox told the Los Angeles Times after renting only a dozen umbrellas to beachgoers in West Ship Island, Miss.
"Last year at this time, we had more than 1,000 people here," she told the newspaper.
In some gulf coast areas, tourist bureaus, rental agents, condo owners and other officials said vacation bookings were down as much as 80 percent, the Times said.
Health officials in Pensacola, the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, warned against swimming in the gulf, or even walking on the beach, because of tar balls in the surf.
A once-popular beach on Alabama's Dauphin Island, near Mobile, was converted into a staging area for oil-cleanup crews.
Fishing was banned along the entire Mississippi coastline.
"A lot of people are scared," said Brandi Bryant, 37, who works at a Westwego, La., seafood stall along the Mississippi River near New Orleans.
"They ask us all day long if there's oil or dispersant on the shrimp," the Times quoted her as saying. "I tell them the Board of Health comes here and we couldn't sell it if it was bad."
