Gulf shrimpers started 2020 on a good note. According to data from NOAA Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center Fishery Monitoring Branch, the total January harvest from commercial fishermen rose for the second consecutive year.
Fishermen in four states – Mississippi did not report data – harvested 2.8 million pounds of shrimp in January. While that’s still significantly lower than the average January, according to Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA) data, it marks a 16.7 percent increase from 2019’s January totals.
Texas reported the largest landings total, with just more than a million pounds harvest. That was about 250,000 pounds more than last season and 12.4 percent better than that 17-year January average for the state.
Louisiana saw the largest increase. At 996,000 pounds, the state jumped up 81.8 percent from its January 2019 total of 548,000 pounds. It’s still more than 43 percent off the historic average, but it marked the second substantial increase in as many years.
Florida’s Gulf Coast shrimpers caught 264,000 pounds in January, up 36.8 percent from the start of 2019. It’s about half of the average January for the state, according to the SAA.
Only Alabama reported a decline from its 2019 totals, as the 548,000 pounds were 35 percent fewer than last year. Still, it’s 16 percent higher than the historic average for the month and the fifth-best January shrimpers have had in Alabama since 2002.
The landings reports still indicate that totals are not anywhere close to totals for the region from years past. The Alliance notes that the difference between what the landings reports state and what NOAA Fisheries annual Fisheries of the United States report has grown wider for each of the past four years. For 2018, the margin was nearly 40 percent.
“This discrepancy is anticipated to continue to grow even larger in 2019,” the SSA said in a statement.
Still, the alliance said it will continue publishing its monthly report, even with the totals being off. That’s because the landings that the Southeast Fisheries Science Center reports can still depict a true picture of trends pertaining to shrimp fishing in the Gulf.
“For this reason, the monthly landings data remains an important bellwether indicator for whether there have been substantial changes in the shrimp harvest,” the group said.
Photo courtesy of Bonnie Taylor Barry/Shutterstock
