This is the time of year when commercial fishermen in South Carolina prepare for the start of the upcoming shrimp season. However, an abnormally cold winter has put the brakes on that, at least temporarily.
Officials with the state’s Department of Natural Resources said the typical season starts sometime between mid- to late-May. They don’t know for certain when the 2018 season will begin.
Technically, there are three distinct seasons in South Carolina. The first is for spring white roe. Brown shrimp are harvested in the summer, and beginning in the fall, white shrimp are caught through January.
Erin Weeks, a media and communication coordinator with the department’s marine resources division, told SeafoodSource.com state biologists trawl every month to review the abundance of white roe shrimp. It’s the female white roe shrimp, who can up to 1 million eggs each in a spawning season, who provide the biomass for the fall crop.
So far, their numbers have come in well below average.
“Any time our biologists see water temperature dropping below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), they start to get anxious, because 48.2 degrees (9 degrees Celsius) is the threshold below which white shrimp start to die of cold exposure,” she said. “Unfortunately, the water temperature in Charleston Harbor went on to remain below that threshold for three full weeks. This killed most of the shrimp overwintering in our inshore waters.”
The shrimp who weren’t killed by the cold saw their development delayed by the weather, Weeks added.
According to Mel Bell, director of the state’s Office of Fisheries Management, it’s only the fifth time since 1990 such a cold weather event has occurred. He told SeafoodSource.com the samples the state took earlier in the spring indicated a rather significant decline in abundance, with yields of less than 3 percent.
Offshore, state officials are seeing low numbers as well.
“We are hoping to see an improvement soon as our coastal waters warm up,” he said.
Frank Blum, executive director of the South Carolina Seafood Alliance, said in an interview with SeafoodSource.com shrimpers already face numerous challenges, from the loss of working waterfronts to a rise in imports. Those might be trumped if white shrimp, which Blum said has greater value than brown shrimp, do not rebound this season.
“It does look like it’s going to hurt them,” said Blum, noting that some area fishermen have moved to or added other fish or focused on niche markets to stay in business.
Still, shrimp remains the largest commercial fishery in the Palmetto State. Over the last five years, the average annual harvest has been valued at USD 7.6 million (EUR 6.4 million).
State officials see signs for a recovery, especially with shrimp able to repopulate quickly. In addition, while white shrimp were impacted by the cold weather, brown shrimp weren’t, Weeks noted.
Bell remains optimistic.
“It’s certainly worth keeping in mind that these cold weather events are not all that common, but when they do occur the resource and the fishery have always rebounded quickly. We are certainly hoping that this year is no different,” he said.
