LaFont says he used to make money in commercial fishing and in new home construction, but the oil spill and the moratorium have hit both.

"The moratorium is eliminating the oil field from working so, in turn, the people that have been working in the oil fields are not going to build, so we ain't have any residential homes being built, everybody building or repairing their homes," he said.

LaFont and Cheramie love nature and want to keep this area protected from oil spills, but Mathew Cheramie does not believe a moratorium on all deepwater drilling was necessary.

"What they need to do is take a step back, correct their drilling, continue, but step up your safety personnel to make sure the job is being done safely and correctly," he said.

Such views baffle many people from outside the region, according to Eric Smith, Associate Director of Tulane University's Energy Institute.

"They think the fishermen and the oil and gas guys should be duking it out in the street, but they are not, because they are the same people," he said.

Smith says the impact of the moratorium will worsen in the months ahead. He says rigs cost up to a million dollars a day, so oil companies cannot afford to leave them idle. He says eight drilling rigs that were on their way to the Gulf were diverted to other locations after the ban was imposed and two others have left since then.

"If you are a company like Murphy, which is one of the rigs that did leave, and you have prospects in Africa as well as here and you see you cannot drill in the Gulf for a couple of years and you are under contract for the rig for five years, you will just move it to Africa and work," Smith said.