Experts at an international conference in South Carolina disagree on whether it’s safe to eat seafood from the Gulf of Mexico after this year’s oil spill.

The International Conference on Shellfish Restoration is under way in Charleston.

One expert said Friday he still doesn’t eat Gulf seafood, while another said he does all the time. A third said he ate Gulf seafood during a recent trip to New Orleans but didn’t do it with much confidence.

Scientists agreed that one task they face is to make sure the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon spill are preserved so they can be drawn upon during the next big spill.

Large areas of the Gulf were closed to fishing for a time because of the spill. After the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, some 170 million gallons of oil spewed from an undersea well.