Preliminary data from NOAA Fisheries shows shrimp landings from the Gulf of Mexico were at a historic low for December and that the 2021 yearly total was only marginally better than the historically low 2020 campaign.
However, the Southern Shrimp Alliance in a statement on Tuesday, 8 February said the agency’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center included “substantial revisions” in December’s report for tallies from previous years.
“These revisions reflect changes to past preliminary reporting such that they now reflect the actual, final shrimp landings data reported by the states,” the trade group said in a statement. “Accordingly, the numbers included in NOAA’s December 2021 shrimp statistics report published by the agency and available on its website are inconsistent with the shrimp statistics reports issued for that month in the preceding four years.”
The SSA said that from 2017 to 2020, preliminary reports were 39.3 percent lower than the final numbers posted.
For 2021, NOAA Fisheries reported preliminary Gulf shrimp landings of 72.8 million pounds. But, again, the alliance does not believe that to be the true count.
“If the discrepancy between the preliminary numbers reported in 2020 and the final numbers currently being reported is used to estimate the underreporting of shrimp landings in 2021, the total shrimp harvest in the Gulf of Mexico for last year would have been 101.4 million pounds,” the group’s statement read.
For December, NOAA Fisheries reported Gulf landings of 4.4 million pounds. That’s the lowest amount ever according to SSA, which tracks data by month, state and year dating back to 2000.
Last year, the initial report for December was 6.6 million pounds, but that has since been adjusted to nearly 9 million.
The discrepancies differ between the states, according to the SSA. Louisiana reported 1.3 million pounds harvested in December. That’s the lowest preliminary total since 2018. However, that 1.1-million-pound total has since been adjusted to 2.8 million. Last year’s preliminary total of 2.1 million has been updated to 5.2 million.
Texas reported 2.1 million in December, but the SSA shows that final totals from previous years differ inconsistently. In 2017, the revised total went up nearly a million pounds to 3.4 million. However, for 2020, the revision went from a preliminary figure of 2.9 million pounds to a final total of 1.3 million pounds.
Alabama shrimpers reported landings of 427,000 pounds for December, the lowest preliminary total since 2013. However, in 2020, the preliminary total of 900,000 pounds was revised to a final report of 1.7 million pounds.
Florida’s west coast landings had their best preliminary report for December since 2017, with 398,000 pounds reported. However, the alliance shows that revisions showed substantial increases every year since 2017.
One state that has not seen substantial changes in its numbers over the past years has been Mississippi. The state reported 151,000 pounds in landings for December. While that number is lower than totals from the previous four years, only one year saw a significant revision in its total. That happened in 2018, when the December tally went from 354,000 pounds to 474,000.
Photo courtesy of Leigh Trail/Shutterstock
