Monday, 13 August, marked the start of the fall inshore shrimp season in Louisiana, U.S.A. However, one shrimper said he did not plan on going out on the first day in an attempt to improve the livelihood of his brethren in the state.
Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, told SeafoodSource on Saturday, 11 August, that he planned to meet with U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) to discuss the current plight of commercial fishermen in the country’s second-largest seafood producing state. Cooper said if there’s anybody in the state’s Congressional delegation who can get President Trump to act, it’s Scalise.
“I still fish for a living,” he said. “I didn’t want to do it Monday, but if that’s the only opening they can give me, I’m going to take it.”
Last week, NOLA.com reported that Louisiana shrimpers were threatening to strike if rates continued to drop and could tie up their boats as early as this week if prices dropped to USD 0.30 (EUR 0.26) per pound. On Saturday, Cooper downplayed talks of a strike, but he said it did remain an option for the group.
Cooper said the prices shrimpers receive today are roughly two-thirds of what they made in the 1980s while operating expenses are three times as high. He blames that on the imported shrimp coming from Asia.
“The prices have been so low, we can’t hardly compete,” he said.
Louisiana lawmakers have been especially active in recent weeks, urging the Trump Administration to increase tariffs and duties on shrimp and increase funding for more testing of imported shrimp, which state officials and shrimp industry representatives say often contain antibiotics and steroids that aren’t allowed in the United States.
Those actions are good, Cooper said. However, they will not do enough to help protect the USD 1.3 billion (EUR 1.14 billion) industry that’s responsible for 15,000 jobs in the state. Ideally, Cooper wants to see caps placed on imported shrimp, so his family and others can make a living.
“We got to look at a long-term solution,” he said. “We can’t just look at antidumping and tariffs that work for two or three years, and we come back to the drawing board. I really don’t know what it looks like, but I’m definitely going to throw some issues at him and see if we can get some of that accomplished.”
