Judy Ledet
May 14, 2007Jill Lyons
May 16, 2007
The inshore shrimp season opened Monday, at noon for Zone 2, which runs from Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River to the western shoreline of Vermillion Bay.
Last year’s shrimp harvest n 83 million pounds worth $144.8 million n was the third highest on record. In 2007, Louisiana will hold more areas of water containing enough salinity to allow shrimp growth, compared to 2006, according to state marine biologist Marty Bourgeois.
Inland Louisiana has 1.9 million acres of water holding 10 parts-per-thousand of salt, the proportion required to permit shrimp growth, Bourgeois said.
Brown shrimp are prevalent inshore during the spring. The white variety dominates inland waters in the fall.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries opens the spring inshore shrimp season when it expects that a representative 100 young brown shrimp will have grown sufficiently to weigh more than one pound as a group.
Bourgeois anticipates that one half of brown shrimp will exceed the 100-to-the-pound threshold by May 17 in Zone 2. Also, powerful tides beginning today may aid shrimpers in Zone 2.
Inshore shrimp season for Zones 1 and 3 will open May 28. Zone 1 stretches from the Louisiana-Mississippi border to Southwest Pass. Zone 3 covers the area from Vermilion Bay’s western shoreline to the Louisiana-Texas border.
The Associated Press contributed to portions of this story.
