Dean Blanchard's firm used to account for 11% of the US shrimp supply. Now, he is reduced to supplying fuel and water to BP clean-up crews

Of all the folks in Louisiana spoiling for a fight with Tony Hayward, none perhaps brings more gusto to the challenge than Dean Blanchard, the local shrimp king.

The outer walls of the trailer office of his seafood empire are plastered with homemade signs reading "BP=Bayou Polluter" and "President Obama: BP took my business and my money."

The frontroom is painted shrimp pink, and Blanchard is working himself up imagining what he would like to do to the BP chief executive if he ever got the chance: fist fight, public wrestling match, jail time?

"He took away everything I love most in the world. I am going to hunt that son of a bitch down like a 'coon," he said. "He wants his life back after all he has done to us? The hell with him."

Then he speculates about peeing in the Queen's water fountain. "What do you think would happen to me? I'd go to jail for that, and it would be relatively minor environmental damage."

He may not immediately look the part in his faded shorts and blue vest and the jumble of buildings around the docks, but in the shrimp world, Blanchard is Hayward.

BP ranks in the top three oil companies; Blanchard says his are the third biggest shrimp docks in the world, with some 6,000 fishermen bringing him their catch. His company accounts for about 11% of the US shrimp supply.

In the pre-spill era, that would have put Hayward and Blanchard on near equal footing, he reckons. Oil and shrimp were the two poles of existence in this part of Louisiana. Offshore rigs and refinery tanks are as ubiquitous as fishing trawlers.

Blanchard had a foot in both worlds. One grandfather got rich on shrimp, establishing the business he now operates near BP's local command centre. The other grandfather got rich from oil.

Now, with the gusher on the ocean floor and fishing banned in much of the Gulf, there is just oil clean-up. At the Sand Dollar marina, redeployed fishermen and shrimpers, hauling containment boom through the water instead of nets, share space with the coastguard and national guard.

The money is only a fraction of what it would be for a successful shrimp season and 2010 was shaping up to be a banner year.

"Every 10 years, when you get a cold winter, you get a really good shrimp crop," Blanchard said. "We were licking our chops."

On a good run, a big shrimp boat could earn $1m (£686,000) a day. The going rate for fishing for oil is $3,000, less for smaller boats – not a lot once divided among captain and crew. Several of the men say they have yet to be paid.

Blanchard says his losses are on a far grander scale. "I've lost $15m worth of sales in the last 50 days. That would have been $1m in my pocket," he said.

A few of the big freezer boats are still going out, but Blanchard says he is reduced to selling BP fuel and water for its contract clean-up crews, and renting out dock space. By his terms, it's a pittance and he has no idea when he will get back to work.

"What I make off of BP I could make in eight hours," he said.

He is equally scathing of BP's oil clean-up strategy. "I could take two 32oz Big Gulp cups from the 7-Eleven and do more than what they are doing," he said.

Blanchard is far from the only angry man in town. The mayor, David Camardelle, was in Washington this week to testify before Congress. He nearly broke down. "The shrimp died. It's a ghost town. The boom doesn't work," he said.

Around the corner from his operations, a family has erected 101 simple white crosses memorialising what has been lost to the spill.

There is sea food industry, with crosses for tuna, shrimp and oyster catches, but also "beach sunrises", "seafood gumbo", "redfish rodeo", "family time", "porch sitting" and "dog on beach".

And for all his bluster, Blanchard is overwhelmed by the loss.

"I think I did everything right, and here this idiot came and didn't know how to run his business and put me out of my business. People used to respect me in this town. Now I wake up in the morning and I don't know what to do."