Not a good year for Gulf Coast shrimp industry

Shrimpers in Louisiana and Mississippi have had to deal with the aftermath of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, an influx of freshwater during the Mississippi River’s flooding this spring and a spike in fuel prices. They’re even being branded as turtle killers. “Fuel prices high, shrimp prices down,” says Pete Gerica, a fisherman on Lake Pontchartrain. “I got better prices in the ’70s.” He says small shrimp were selling for $1 to $1.40 a pound on the dock. To him, the shrimp caught this year were smaller than usual. He wondered if the oil spill hurt the usual food sources for shrimp. “The populations (of shrimp) were there, they just didn’t grow. The crabs were behind in growth, too,” Gerica says. “I don’t think there was enough in the system for them to get to the size we usually see.” The biggest problems are in Louisiana, hit hard by the BP oil spill and the high river. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened two Louisiana spillways this year to divert high water from the Mississippi to keep river levels down, but all that freshwater hurt shrimp grounds, says Jerald Horst, a Louisiana biologist and shrimp expert. “It’s a subnormal shrimp season. Prices haven’t really been that good. The supply of shrimp isn’t where it should be, which we attribute to the massive amounts of freshwater,” Horst says. Louisiana so far has brought in about 26.5 million pounds of shrimp during the brown shrimp season. In 2009, 27.4 million pounds of brown shrimp were harvested; and in really good years, like 2004 and 2006, more than 48 million pounds of brown shrimp were harvested.—Tim Boone