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For the past month, Yen Lee, manager of Bethesda Crab House, gets about four calls per day from people with the same question: Is the food safe to eat?

Potential diners — spurred by news reports of the ongoing issues with the aftermath of the April 20 explosion of a BP drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico — want to know if the seafood he serves could be tainted or if it is available at all, Lee said.

"I tell everybody the same thing: Crabs don't live in the ocean and we check everything we serve to make sure it's alright," he said. "In fact, the quality of our crabs has gone up; [customers] are just worried because all they hear about is the oil spill and immediately they think every fish or oyster will have oil on it." Alaskan and Dungeness crabs live in the Pacific Ocean.

Meredith Miller of Gaithersburg called McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant in downtown Bethesda to ask about the quality of their food before dining there last week.

"I was worried they wouldn't have any fish at all," she said. "Considering what's happening, I didn't know what to expect when we decided to go out for [seafood]."

Kim Amendola, a spokeswoman with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Fisheries Service, based in Louisiana said 78,182 square miles of federal waters in the gulf has been closed to fishing because of the risk of oil contamination, representing 32 percent of the total area.

These closures have driven up his seafood prices, on average about $1 per pound — or 25 percent — for shrimp and about 33 percent for crab and other shellfish between the start of May and June, said George McManus, president of J.J. McDonell & Co. Inc., a Jessup-based seafood distributor.

In April, McManus said his company was purchasing large shrimp at an average of $7.25 per pound, rising to $8.75 last week. Medium shrimp rose from $4.25 to $5.25 in the same time period as well. He said 2009 prices averaged close to $7 per pound.

McManus said although the increasing price is worrisome, consumer demand will determine the future of the area seafood market; making the local fight against the spill mainly a public perception issue.

"Ultimately, the consumer will be responsible for how bad this is going to get," he said. "If demand drops, then we have problems with supply, then it all collapses."

"It's like the housing market, if prices get to such a point that people stop buying; then it could be devastating."

About 15 percent of the nearly 20,000 pounds of seafood he takes in weekly comes from the Gulf of Mexico, McManus said.

Gulf fisheries represent a massive portion of American seafood. Overall, commercial fisherman in the gulf harvested 1.27 billion pounds of finfish and shellfish in 2008; compared to the less than 45 million collected in Maryland waterways, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Jeff Grolig, owner of River Falls Seafood Company in Potomac, said the rising cost of domestic shrimp has been driven mainly by speculation and fear that the coming harvesting season — occurring in July in the Gulf Coast — will not produce enough to refill supply.

"The shrimp you buy now was caught before the oil spill ever happened, the pricing has been all speculation at this point," he said.

Carlos Arana, owner of Louisiana Kitchen & Bayou Bar in Bethesda, said although his prices have risen, he won't raise his prices in fear of losing customers.

"It hasn't become a big enough problem yet, but it could be," he said. "If it keeps going up, we might have to start thinking about [raising our prices]."

Arana said he too hears a lot of concerns from customers about the quality of seafood, despite only a fraction of what he serves coming from the Louisiana Coast.

"We're 100 percent oil-free, that's what I say," he said. "In fact, we don't much of our seafood from that area; a lot of it is local."

In the end though, Lee said the future for seafood restaurants could lie with how the average person feels about seafood.

"It's not as if anybody has anything to fear about the food that ends up on their plate, but the negative publicity could be enough to worry people," he said.