Another chance to prosper

It began quietly, this year’s white shrimp season, on Friday.

If you know how to look for the rhythms of the bayous, you could see the boats heading out, some Thursday night, some even earlier.

On those vessels large and small ride the cultural lifeblood of this region, one of the things that makes us different from everywhere else. Commercial fishing is seen by many as a relic of the past, but the dollars that it pumps into the local economy is anything but yesterday’s news.

The boats are so much more than boats. They are in essence the equivalent of family-owned stores,

Today as years ago, you can hear some of the captains speaking in French if you are close enough to where the vessels are, on the VHF radios. Travel own the bayous in Terrebonne and Lafourche and you can still find people who mend their own nets, who know how to take a boat apart and put it back together because it is what they grew up doing, because their fathers and grandfathers taught them this. And some of them are teaching their sons and their daughters.

A lot has changed over the years in the manners of fishing, in the technology, and there are things that can be done which can make the trade attractive to younger people, if they are given the right boost.

There is a thought – just a thought for now – that our local colleges could offer courses at some point, which would combine the old-fashioned knowledge that is tried and true with the technologies that have become a part of the market and the fishery.

It’s going to take a while. Julie Falgout, the seafood industry liaison for Louisiana SeaGrant, believes very much in this approach and is carefully watching how similar programs are being developed elsehere.

If anyone picks up this banner it will no doubt be SeaGrant, considering its history of being the only support in many cases that local fishing families hav been able to count on.

But SeaGrant is in trouble.

The program is still absent from the budget presented by the President of the United States. But congressmen and senators from the coastal states are indicating that they will do what is needed for the program to keep support at the federal level, which is where it was born.

There are other glimmers of hope for the future along these lines. HR 2079, the Young Fishermen’s Development act of 2017, was introduced by Rep. Don Young of Alaska and is an item that is very much alive. It will help create education programs for 21st century fishers. If you read the text you will see that SeaGrant figures very heavily into this formula.

“We need to keep our fisheries viable and we can only do that if young people enter our industry,” says Julie Falgout. “We have too much invested here in the Gulf, in Louisiana. The only way we are going to keep them is if we have things like this, programs for them to learn from, ways to show them a life not only as good as their parents or grandpresnts have had, but one even better thanks to technologu those parents and grandparents may never have dreamed of.”

We have the infrastructure, the processing houses, although some are now vacant and quiet. We have the docks, and lord knows we have the boats.

But we need the hope. We need to connect with a world that has found ways for natural resources to remain viable objects of commerce and trade.

It is unforutanate that something like the Young Fishermen’s Act was not the product of a Louisiana pen. But local representatives can always tag themselves on.

The local culture can be saved in other ways as well. With boats bringing back shrimp as they test out the first weeks of this white shrimp season, there will be plenty for the buying. Locally owned groceries like Rouses and Cannata’s have local shrimp available, and a lot of people have started to sell right off their boats.

The rest of t he world knows shrimping is an integral part of our culture. We need to make sure that we don’t lose sight of it ourselves.

John DeSantis