Ailing Industry: No Good News for Shrimp

After Months of Good, Now a Little Bad
June 13, 2018
Airport Working Hard to Secure Area’s Economic Future
June 13, 2018
After Months of Good, Now a Little Bad
June 13, 2018
Airport Working Hard to Secure Area’s Economic Future
June 13, 2018
By JOHN DeSANTIS

Trawlers stand with booms tall at attention along the bayous of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes, lending their grace to a skyscape higher than most nearby structures.

Some have helped pay for children to go to college or made good the mortgage on their captains’ homes.


But the local shrimp industry has been unable to escape tough times with the problem in many cases being that long-standing problems like a flood of imports into the U.S. are exacerbated by the unpredictable, such as weather and the water’s salinity.

In some locales the emergence of fresh-water diversion projects aimed at saving Louisiana’s coast creates its own set of hurdles.

“I don’t think I’ve seen it this bad,” a Terrebonne Parish councilman, Al Marmande, said last week.


“It’s really, really bad,” added Joe Breaux, a Lafourche trawler who catches shrimp as a deckhand on his friend’s boat. “My captain has been doing this for 30-plus years and right now, this is the low point. A lot of people are saying that it’s never been as down as it is right now. We are in need of help.”

Recently, a downward spiral in prices paid at the dock has created a difficult dilemma for fishermen and their buyers alike. Expend money for fuel and supplies – sometimes thousands of dollars for a voyage – and come back with barely enough to see that everyone gets paid, is one choice. Staying home and allowing for no cash flow is another.

“We sometimes can do better not going out at all,” Breaux said. “We sometimes go on the water and lose money. All that work in the hot sun and you don’t have anything to show for it. It’s frustrating.”


Likewise, processors and dock owners face similar decisions. Some confess to buying shrimp they neither need nor want that will end up in cold storage, rather than alienate fishermen whose catches they will need when things get better.

“Some fishermen say it’s the processors being greedy,” said long-time shrimp buyer Dean Blanchard of Grand Isle. “That ain’t it. If that was the reason why, then how come we see so many processors closed down?”

Blanchard ticked off a list of processors in Louisiana and Alabama – once big names in shrimp – who are either shut down or close to it, drily noting that the conditions are not improving.


A Louisiana Shrimp Association meeting in Houma was to have addressed some of the concerns on June 8. That meeting was also attended by U.S. Senator John Kennedy. But there is no consensus as to what solution will be best for the area.

“We want to know if there is anything he can do to help, is there anything he can do to help raise our shrimp prices,” said Angela Portier, of Chauvin. “We need a direct line to President Trump. We need to know his home number. We need help and we are praying all the time. We have God, we have faith, but we need our government on our side also.”

Heroic efforts have been made over many years to fight what all agree is the local industry’s biggest problem, the low cost of shrimp raised in aquaculture operations in Asia and South America. Tariffs have been imposed after a struggle that began in 2002, bore fruit in 2004, and which continues as various offending nations or importers petition for adjustments and readjustments.


“What fishermen need to do at this point, there are a few things. One is to get the attention of the Secretary of Commerce,” said Kimberly Chauvin of Bluewater Shrimp in Dulac, who owns both docks and boats. “Use social media as a tool. Use Twitter. Also the U.S. Trade Representative. There needs to be one message going two times a day. There is so much shrimp this year. It is an elevated amount of poundage. Maybe if we shut down for a minute people will breathe.”

The abundance in shrimp – with no rises in price – began this year when the brown shrimp season began in May. Chauvin and some other industry voices say the coming white shrimp season, which will open in August, is where the focus now needs to be in terms of speaking to the hearts and minds of U.S. government officials. •