U.S. Shrimping Communities Seek Disaster Declaration Over Low Prices
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Pounded by dockside prices under $1 a pound, southern U.S. shrimp fishermen and their elected officials are calling for state and federal declarations of a fishery disaster over what they say is dumping of foreign shrimp on the U.S. market.
“Due to the influx of imported shrimp entering the state of Louisiana, which is allowing foreign countries to dominate our Louisiana shrimp industry…shrimp harvesters are receiving lower than $1 per pound for their shrimp product which is lower than they have ever received in years past,” wrote president Acy Cooper Jr. and other members of the Louisiana Shrimp Association in an Aug. 25 letter to Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
With operating costs also rising, “commercial fishing vessels are forced to remain dockside and businesses are being forced to shut down their operations,” the letter states, asking Edwards for an emergency declaration.
That same day the Southern Shrimp Alliance sent a letter to Southern governors from North Carolina to Texas urging disaster declarations. The group noted that in 2022 Congress changed the statutory authorization for the federal Fishery Disaster Assistance program to allow the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to take action when a fishery is hit by man-made disaster “otherwise beyond the control of fishery managers to mitigate through conservation and management measures.”
“The global supply of predominately farm-raised shrimp has reached records highs and has far outstripped global demand. U.S. imports of frozen warmwater shrimp nearly doubled from 2013 to 2021 to an unprecedented level of 1.8 billion pounds,” according to the alliance letter.
“U.S. inventories of shrimp are overwhelmed; driving prices paid to shrimp fishermen to record lows that cannot cover the costs of a shrimp fishing trip – expenses further exacerbated by historically high fuel prices and inflation,” the letter states. “Faced with the choice of losing money on a trip – or not being able to sell their catch at all – shrimp fishermen throughout the region remain tied to the dock with no income at the height of the season.”
