Fishermen face new challenges

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Bayou region shrimpers and buyers say low volumes and slow size have plagued their recent spring season, even though landings are up throughout other Gulf of Mexico ports.

They now question whether their catches could be affected by a disease that usually infests overseas aquaculture operations. But scientists here have few answers as to whether white spot disease can have a damaging effect on wild shrimp within limited geographic areas, because little research on the topic is being done.


“No prices, no shrimp and we can’t understand it,” said Dularge shrimp dealer Al Marmande. “The last two boats that came in couldn’t pay the ice and diesel. Three big boats, 2100 pounds of shrimp. Small shrimp are getting 80 cents per pound.”

The experience is not universal within the nation’s eight shrimp-producing states, nor even within Louisiana.

That’s why some shrimpers suspect that undiagnosed trouble may lurk within the local fishery itself. At the tail end of this year’s crawfish season, white spot disease was detected in Louisiana ponds. It’s not too far a jump, some in the industry, to suspect contamination with the virus as a cause for decline.


“Is it the same strain that is in the Asian shrimp that gets imported here?” said Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. “If you look at the history of what’s going on with apple snails and carp and other invasive problems, also a bug that’s in the cane fields, why do we have to wait to see if there is a problem, a connection between white spot in shrimp, the low numbers and the small sizes. Last year they didn’t grow. That’s what’s been happening now. Do we have shrimp that are not maturing and we don’t know what’s going on?”

NOAA statistics for Gulf of Mexico shrimp landings show that from Jan. through May has been the highest volume for that period since 2006.

In total, Gulf shrimpers caught 30.3 million pounds in 2017 through May, up from 23.6 million pounds in the same period last year. Louisiana’s 12.8 million pounds is the highest for the period since 2013.


But the figures don’t yet reflect the data that fishermen are already seeing and experiencing, regarding the 2017 brown shrimp season which began in May and ended last month, particularly the run-downs in Terrebonne and Lafourche. Fishermen say the sizes of shrimp they catch in the spring season are small, indicating that shrimp are not getting the chance to mature.

That’s where the white spot concerns come in.

Some shrimp processors in the Bayou Region, fishermen say, are known to pack imported shrimp as contract work, in almost all cases into boxes that show country of origin. Fishermen question whether runoff water from the processing work could be having an impact on wild shrimp in bayous and small lakes, causing uncharted mortality while the shrimp are still young.


Jeffrey Marx, the chief shrimp biologist at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, is skeptical.

“White spot is easily transmitted in confined situations,” Marx said. “Most affected are aquaculture in shrimp or crawfish, they are in a pond and they can’t go anywhere. The shrimp may get it here but it’s something you don’t see a lot of. It’s been here since the 1990s. I’m not ruling it out completely but the way I look at is that shrimp sizes would be environmental.”

He also acknowledged that the bulk of research into white spot has been focused on confined areas, rather than in the wild. White spot does exist in the wild, he and other scientists have said, but it is the prevalence and ability for wide spreading that is in doubt.


Fishermen want more research to be done, and some precautions to be taken, however.

In particular, the potential of any link between the wild ecosystem and imported shrimp is something they take seriously. They have battled imports for a long time on the basis of economics, and the damage low overseas prices do to their domestic industry. There have also been concerns about use of antibiotics in overseas ponds and attendant health risks to consumers. But now the concern is focused on the shrimp themselves, and fishermen say a proactive approach recently taken by Australia should be the model.

The down-under nation banned imports after white spot began to show up in local aquaculture operations. White spot also made an appearance among wild shrimp in the Logan River, south of Brisbane. The ban has since been loosened to allow certain products back in.


A ban on imports in the U.S. would require a buy-in from the Department of Commerce, and there are no indications that any such action is under consideration.

Some regulators have suspicions that the real target in the discussion is imported shrimp overall, based on economic considerations. But fishermen say it is a question of survival because of problems with the crop.

White spot discovered among wild crawfish in the Atchafalaya Basin – after discovery in crawfish ponds in Louisiana – is a concern for shrimpers. David Chauvin, a Dulac boat owner and shrimp buyer, harvests in the Atchafalaya region often,


“My question would be why did Australia take such drastic measures? In this county it seems were are taking just the opposite stance,” said Chauvin. “We don’t know but yet we still do nothing? I would love to see them do what Australia did, we know it is shrimp being brought from other countries and problems in our waters here. This country should stop any country that has white spot in the shrimp they are importing from exporting to the U.S.”

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