DELACROIX ISLAND, Louisiana - In the wake of the worst offshore oil spill in United States history, Aaron Greco was trying to decide what to do with his life.

And as deepwater drilling resumes in the Gulf of Mexico, it is young men like Aaron who will shoulder the direct impact of America’s decisions about what energy to consume and what seafood to eat in the years to come.

Long before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, rising fuel prices and competition from Asia’s cheap farmed shrimp had made a risky and physically punishing profession far less profitable: only a few thousand Louisianians now make their living fishing, down from more than 20,000 in the late 1980s.

Yet Aaron, 19, was still drawn to an elemental way of life. He wanted to be his own boss , 48 kilometers south of New Orleans and a world away.

“I want to chase the shrimp more than anything,” he told his girlfriend. “But I’m stuck.”

When the spill closed the waters around St. Bernard Parish, Aaron bounced between doubt and determination. His sisters pushed him to go on to college; his uncles warned of the lingering effects of dispersants used to clean up the oil. Even after the well was capped, he questioned his abilities.

He clashed with his father, Buddy, even as he sought his help.

For Buddy, 43, who had quit school in 10th grade , there had been no choice: like almost everyone else in Delacroix, he never considered anything but fishing.

When Aaron was born, in 1990, Buddy covered the hospital bill with a few hundred bags of oysters at $27 each.

“I paid for your stinky behind in that bayou,” he liked to remind his son.

By the time Aaron was 13, he was lobbying to leave school himself. “Let me come on the boat,” he pleaded.

But Buddy wanted his only boy to have other options. Fishing was unpredictable, the work was dangerous, and there was no retirement plan. “You smart enough to go to college,” he said.

So Aaron finished school, and taught himself to fix used Mustangs. He took a job washing cars at a collision shop. But in April, he quit to go crabbing.

“You nuts, Aaron,” his older sister, Brittany, told him.

In early June 2009, he persuaded his father to rig up an old boat damaged during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 .

Talking Buddy into it wasn’t easy: the year was yielding among the smallest brown shrimp catches in a decade.

Finally, Buddy told his wife he was going to teach Aaron a lesson. He would take him out . “He’ll be done with it then,” he told her.

“He’ll be wet and miserable, and he won’t want to fool with this anymore.”

As soon as they pushed into the bayou, father and son could see the shrimp jumping. And when they finally headed in, exhausted and drenched, they had 815 kilograms of shrimp.

The price at the dock was about two dollars a kilogram, half of what Buddy got the year Aaron was born. But Aaron was hooked.

Still, he wondered whether anyone would buy gulf seafood once the fishermen were allowed to catch it again. “

People are worried about it,” he told his girlfriend, Melanie.

But by the time word came that the well had been capped, he had decided to buy his uncle’s boat. His first solo run was a disaster.

His nets got tangled and ripped. He caught crab traps in his rigging. “This is a mess,” he raged. Aaron was barely covering his fuel costs, but he would go every day, he vowed, to catch the volume he needed. And every time, he got better.

“This was a good day,” he told Melanie a few nights later. “I got used to everything. I felt - accomplished.”


By AMY HARMON