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A flight along the coast by officials with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department on Thursday told the latest story of the state’s shrimping industry. Only 65 trawlers were counted in the bays, 758 fewer than in 1994, the first time wildlife officials conducted such a flight.

Thursday was a good day for officials to count the trawlers as May 15 marked the closure of the Gulf of Mexico to trawlers. Many of them were returning to shore while others had begun shrimping in bay waters.

Gulf waters are closed from the coast out to nine nautical miles and the National Marine Fisheries Service closes the gulf waters out to 200 nautical miles to conform to the Texas closure. Texas is the only gulf state to close its waters, according to officials with the Texas Shrimp Association.

Closure of gulf waters allows small shrimp to grow to a larger, more valuable size before harvesting and to protect the population. Typically, once the shrimp reach about 3 1/2 inches long, they begin their migration back to the Gulf of Mexico.

Bay shrimping is allowed year-round and some of the gulf trawlers will shrimp the bays during the two-month gulf hiatus, said Mark Fisher, a state department science director.

While gulf waters are scheduled to open on July 15, the department will sample shrimp populations to determine the best time to reopen the waters. The two-month window might be long enough to bring the number of Texas trawlers further down.

A handful of trawlers remain at Peoples Street T-Head, a stark contrast to the 30 or so boats that lined the T-head just seven years ago. But the low number of trawlers going out to shrimp is not just a concern for Texas, but also for the rest of the gulf states.

Deborah Long, a spokeswoman for the Southern Shrimp Alliance, said that although the number of U.S. commercial shrimp permits in 2007 was 1,928, the number of vessels recording shrimp landings, or hauls, was 1,162.

“The number of hours trawlers are in the water versus the number of permits is a better indication of how the industry is doing,” said Long, whose organization comprises all the coastal states between North Carolina and Texas. “There has been a 50 percent decline since 2000 and it has continued to decline even though the price of shrimp has stabilized.”

Texas Parks and Wildife has not released its landing figures for 2007. Those will be released in about a month, Fisher said.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, a department of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, compiles preliminary landings for 2007 and 2008 for several gulf states. Data shows the number of pounds harvested during the first quarter of the year compared with the same period in 2007 declined by about 53.5 percent.

Compared with the first three months of 2006, the decline was of 58.5 percent.

“A lot of has to do with high gas prices and the number of imported shrimp, which accounts for 90 percent of the U.S. consumption,” Long said. “When the price of shrimp is not very high, that’s not a very good return on investment.”

The Marine Fisheries report states the number of imported, mostly farm-raised shrimp has increased since 2005 from 1.7 million pounds to 1.9 million pounds in 2007. The lower cost of imported shrimp has hurt U.S. shrimpers as much as the increasing price of diesel, Long said.

Fisher thinks many of those who have remained in the business have done so by working hard and selling to a niche market, those who love to fish.

“I suspect a lot of these guys out there are not just shrimping for table shrimp,” Fisher said, “but also for live bait.”

(2) User Comments:

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Posted by 293094 on May 16, 2008 at 6:17 p.m.

sad times bro, sad times

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Posted by 298981 on May 19, 2008 at 3:45 p.m.

wild texas shrimp is the best in the world, why would someone eat something raised in filthy water in a third world country?