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It began as a trickle of boats late Saturday and early Sunday, heading out to favorite shrimp-hunting spots in the lakes and bays of Terrebonne and Lafourche, where they waited for the time to lower nets like horses at their starting gates.
Then at 6 a.m. Monday the booms splayed out and the trawl doors splashed, marking the start of the 2018 Louisiana inshore shrimp season.
Until now they called it the “May season.” when brown shrimp were moving from estuaries toward the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be one span of a few weeks in which to catch them.
Now, with the season starting earlier than it ever has in recent memory and record, they’ll have to call it something else.
The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission voted unanimously last week at a special emergency meeting to open the season on April 30, heeding recent pleas by some fishermen and dock owners, while ruling against those of some others who had wanted to wait until the traditional opening.
LDWF biologist Peyton Cagle gave a detailed presentation to the commissioners, who met at the agency’s Baton Rouge headquarters/
“This is one of the largest amounts of shrimp we have seen,” Cagle said of trawl samples done at various spots in the Terrebonne and Barataria basins. On average size , Cagle said, “This is the second highest we have seen in eleven years. Those shrimp will move out with one north wind, and with cold fronts.”
Among attendees at the meeting speaking against the early opening was Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle. Louisiana’s only inhabited barrier island, he said, is affected by recent freshwater diversion projects related to restoring the state’s coast. The increased amount of fresh water, he said, makes for less dramatic shrimp development.
“For the fishermen in our area it’s going to be a little early,” he said. “My fishermen are starving. They have caught a few shrimp, but when we fool with mother nature with freshwater it affects a lot of things.”
As with last year, shrimp were maturing earlier, getting bigger earlier and ready to head out earlier. This year as last year many shrimpers wanted assurances that thy could get out while the crop was still abundant, before the brown shrimp headed out for Texas.
Lunar effects were discussed as well. The full moon was Sunday, and Cagle said that would affect shrimp movements too.
Ruth Pitre, manager of the Open Harvest seafood market in Delcambre, begged for a later season.
“This is supposed to be a May season, not April,” she said. “In May every year is is earlier and earlier. I think April 30 is wrong, a lot of the boats are not even ready.”
Sellers of ice — needing to manufacture enough to meet demand rapidly — also balked at the early season.
But others in the industry said they were fine with the concept.
“Times are changing, as are weather patterns and the hydrology,” said David Chauvin, owner of three boats and two seafood companies in Dulac. “This year the data shows that the crossover date is earlier than normal and that the season can be opened, so that the industry can harvest shrimp in a sustainable manner. We have to face the changes and the realities that are now in our industry.”
Chauvin and other speakers asked that the commission sponsor some studies to more closely examine changes that are occurring in the biology, which scientists indicate is related to climate change from several perspectives.
LDWF staff members will be getting back to the commission most likely next month with a plan for the change should be examined.
