Seafood? Eat it now!

Be prepared to pay jumbo prices for shrimp.

As the two-week-old Gulf Coast oil spill lingers offshore, the slick is endangering and shutting down key commercial fishing spots that supply the shrimp, crab and oysters that grace restaurant menus across Southern Nevada.

"Prices are going to rise, like they do any time there's some sort of disaster," said Mark Smolen, owner of Nevada Seafood Wholesalers. "When there's a seafood shortage, you'll see a spike in prices across the board."

Some purveyors say they've already seen costs jump, as restaurateurs, grocers and other buyers begin to snap up existing seafood supplies sitting frozen in warehouses.

Smolen's company specializes in distributing Gulf Coast catches such as shrimp, crawfish and blue crab. Prices for shrimp have risen 15 percent to 20 percent since the spill, Smolen estimated.

"It's immediate, and it's a chain reaction," he said.

Some seafood buyers said they have yet to feel the effects of the spill.

Downtown's Golden Gate Hotel & Casino, famed for its $1.99 shrimp cocktail, has a kind of futures hedge on the shellfish, with prices locked in 90 days in advance, said owner Biff Naylor. Nor does Naylor expect a steep increase in the cost of shrimp three months from now, because shrimp is farmed worldwide, he said.

Savvas Andrews, owner of The Bagel Cafe on North Buffalo Drive, sounded less optimistic. Andrews buys shellfish for his delicatessen's shrimp salad (mmmm, shrimp salad!) from Indonesia and Malaysia, but a cutoff in Gulf Coast shrimp would cause a global shortage in supplies. That would affect seafood buyers everywhere.

"I'm expecting shrimp prices to go way up within the next couple of weeks," Andrews said.

If oysters are your preferred shellfish, well, you'd better indulge now.

Provided oil keeps spewing into the gulf, oysters might just have to come off the menu in the next week at Hot N Juicy Crawfish, a Cajun eatery on Spring Mountain Road. Oysters make up just 5 percent of Hot N Juicy's sales, said owner Tim Nguyen, so the effect on the restaurant should be minimal. About 90 percent of the eatery's sales come from its spicy crawfish dishes (mmmm, spicy crawfish!), and because crawfish grow inland, Hot N Juicy's mainstay should stick around, Nguyen said.

A supply shortfall of oysters, shrimp and crab isn't the only concern poised to pressure seafood prices upward.

Fishermen typically round up crustaceans about 50 miles from the Gulf Coast. But the oil spill, which has a surface area of roughly 2,000 miles, is 40 miles from shore -- right in prime shrimping territory. The slick's location will push fishers 150 miles to 200 miles out to sea, and that longer travel time adds costs that pass through to purveyors and, ultimately, consumers.

What's more, there's better money these days for fishers who contract with BP, the oil company that owned the destroyed drilling rig behind the spill. BP has hired fishers to lay oil-absorbing barriers designed to keep the crude from washing ashore, Smolen said. That means fewer fishers in the business.

Just how much more prices rise will depends on how long the spill lasts, and how much more it spreads. Nguyen said his father-in-law, a shrimper in the Gulf Coast, is resigned to long-term effects on his shrimping business, mostly through increased costs that come with trolling farther out to sea.

Smolen said sources have told him it could take anywhere from 5 years to 15 years for the Gulf Coast fishing market to recover.

Still, local businesses seem loath to raise seafood prices at this point.

A pound of shrimp salad (mmmm, more shrimp salad!) at The Bagel Cafe already runs $15, and boosting prices further could turn consumers away from the product, Andrews said.

"How much more are people going to pay?" he asked.

Smolen said he's heard no talk among grocers of raising seafood prices, and he doesn't expect additional major cost spikes inside restaurants that serve shrimp and crab.

"I'm telling (buying clients) to anticipate small price increases, and to make sure their menus accommodate that accordingly," he said. "If they're buying shrimp, buy a little less, and count on that profit being taken out. Seafood needs to be competitive (in price). If it's not, people will get steak or chicken instead."

Nguyen said he's planning for a 5-cent to 10-cent increase per pound for the small amount of shrimp he buys at Hot N Juicy, and he plans to absorb the cost to keep his customers happy in a slumping economy.

And though the Golden Gate made headlines two years ago when it bumped its shrimp-cocktail prices from 99 cents to $1.99, don't count on more newsmaking cost hikes, Naylor said. The dish is already a loss leader for the property, and another small uptick in the cost of shellfish won't make or break the Golden Gate's fortunes.

Said Naylor: "There's probably $4 or $5 worth of shrimp in that $1.99 cocktail. I'm not too concerned. It's just a matter of how much we want to lose on shrimp cocktails."

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512.