Endangered species plans ahead

Right there near La. Highway 1, where it crosses with U.S. Highway 90, some people got a chance to see an endangered species.

Amid the farmers selling vegetables and fruits, the craft people selling lots of other things, and all that makes up the Lafourche Central Market on Saturday mornings, stood Lance Nacio and his 12-year-old daughter Savannah.

They weren’t just selling the shrimp caught on Lance’s boat, the 55-foot Anna Marie, which through new technology no longer must be subject to the whims of melting ice but is specially frozen for such occasions. They were also responsible for the spicy-sweet aroma of shrimp boiled in seasoning which could be eaten right there.

“She is a great help,” Lance says of Savannah, who goes to school at Bayou Blue Middle. “She handles the bags and the money and helps me bag up the shrimp. She’s been doing it with us for quite a while.”

Savannah’s 16-year-old sister, Breanna, was at a church retreat and so couldn’t attend. But she is usually at the market, too.

“I am hoping one day they can do it themselves,” says Lance, who enjoys coming to the market with catch for sale.

But there is much to do such as repairs and maintenance on the boat, preparation of catch brought in bound for other customers and the promotion that is necessary for a one-boat operation like Lance’s to stay in business these days.

What shrimpers must deal with is well known in these communities to anyone who cares enough to stop and ask.

There are the problems fishermen have dealt with even before Andrew, Peter, James and John, the weather and the fickle nature of the catch. What the disciples never dealt with was an influx of inexpensive imports that drag prices down to the level below the dock. The gospels say nothing of oil spills and their effect on markets, and are silent on the matter of sea turtles and how best to protect them while not knocking the fishermen out of the box, too.

A long time ago, fishermen like Lance had other catches to keep them going if the shrimp didn’t work out. But equipment fees, the economy in general, the effects more than a decade ago of the 9/11 catastrophe on trade and travel, the gill net ban in Louisiana and other man-made issues have made that kind of diversification more difficult which is why the species Lance falls into, these Louisiana commercial fishermen, is so endangered.

When the price of shrimp fell and the price of fuel kept climbing, a lot of boats fell off the tally. The numbers didn’t add up, and without taking advantage of new methods and new approaches, only the strongest and most adaptable held onto the pretense of a future.

Lance now has a grader on his boat, and the ability to use this for marketing the catch, beyond mere eye identification of the sizes, has made him a more welcome vendor in this age when uniformity of appearance for the shrimp is as important as the taste.

“We have tried to make Coon-ass versions of a grader but nothing has ever worked like this equipment, it’s almost like a coin counter,” Lance proudly states. “These days we need to utilize every resource. With the cost of operating boats you need to figure out how to squeeze every dollar out of every gallon of fuel you burn, and you could only market so much good quality, uniform shrimp by hand. The future is getting what we can out of the resource, everything we can.”

So the new grader helps, along with the shatter-pack freezing. And now this market, like those in Baton Rouge or New Orleans, is helping, too.

On Saturday, in addition to sales of cooked and raw shrimp, there was something else for Lance and Savannah.

“It’s quality time together and she gets to see what it takes for me to pay the bills,” says Lance.

Seeing that his daughters’ futures are so linked to his present, Lance says it’s easier to do what is necessary to make the future a prosperous one, giving him hope that talk of fishermen like him being endangered is a bit premature, and causing a guy who hasn’t had so much to smile about for a while to nonetheless do so, while stating emphatically, “It is a winning proposition.”