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September 10, 2013Former Jindal aide named LABI head
September 10, 2013
Fishermen are getting more for their catches as Louisiana’s white shrimp season continues in full swing.
But that also means consumers – used to paying rock bottom prices at retail outlets and when buying shrimp from fishermen directly – are having to shell out more for the crustaceans, and some aren’t taking so kindly to it.
“People have gotten spoiled from those cheap prices,” said Kim Chauvin of the David Chauvin Seafood Company in Dulac. “People will pay more for fair trade coffee but a lot of people are not willing to pay that for fair retail seafood prices.”
Chauvin and her husband do a large retail business from the dock where they unload shrimp from their own boats and also purchase shrimp from other local fishermen.
At some docks shrimp numbering 16-20 to the pound have been earning nearly $4 per pound to the boat, where last year prices were $3 or less for the same size. In prior years the price for those same shrimp has been as low as $1 to $2. That means retail prices of $5 to $6 per pound or more depending on where consumers buy their shrimp.
The increase in prices is largely due, seafood business sources say, to diseased shrimp in Asian aquaculture operations, the same shrimp that have been keeping prices low worldwide for years.
Early Mortality Syndrome has encroached on the ponds of China, Vietnam and Thailand, three of the world’s biggest shrimp-producing nations, knocking down exports from those countries by nearly a third this year.
The shortage has driven up global shrimp prices, allowing local processors to get more for their product. That means the processors can pay fishermen more.
As a result, fewer fishermen are selling large portions of their catch through Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets, and are content to take their shrimp to the traditional channels.
Low shrimp prices – even when offset by a major trade action brought by shrimpers, processors and others in the domestic industry in 2004 – resulted in more fishermen seeking higher-paying alternatives for their catches, ranging from roadside sales to Internet entrepreneurship.
It also resulted in more fishermen dropping out of the business, with processors and dock owners closing their operations as well.
The bubble won’t last forever, however, and it doesn’t necessarily translate to cause for rejoicing by fishermen or anyone else.
A shortage of white shrimp in local waters is also contributing to the high local prices. As the season wears on available shrimp will be smaller and perhaps more abundant. Dock owners and fishermen suggest that prices may drop when that happens.
Dock owner Dean Blanchard, who runs operations in Grand Isle and Dulac, said it’s hard to tell when prices will go up overall. The silver lining, in his estimation, may not be in the short-term economics but the long-term survival of the fishery.
“This will last as long as the imports are in trouble I guess,” Blanchard said. “I’m glad the price is high right now because maybe we will get more people in this business. These days the daddy doesn’t teach the son. The son has seen the daddy unhappy and doesn’t want to learn to work a boat, he wants to do something else. Now maybe the son sees the daddy happy and making money he might want to go on the boat, and the dad will teach him instead of telling him to do something else for a living. In other businesses change comes with each time you graduate a class. But in shrimping it’s generational.”
Workers at the David Chauvin Shrimp Company in Dulac offload a boat of shrimp last week. Retail customers at the Chauvin dock and other places are balking at high prices. But fishermen are getting a good deal for the first time in years.
