Saving Seafood

Coast Shrimpers Cling to Legacy Through the Industry’s Choppy Waters

May 4, 2020 — Danny Ross, an Ocean Springs shrimper, has been on a boat for as long as he could walk. He remembers driving the family vessel as a kid, having to climb onto the dashboard to see over the steering wheel. “Two spokes to the left,” his dad would direct. He remembers, back on land, getting bad grades in art class because he would only draw one thing.

“I’d draw a pretty good boat too,” he said. “Me and my brothers were always on the boat. The rigging, the pipes – that was our jungle gym. And our swimming pool? The boat would be shrimping and we’d be diving off the bow, catching ropes on the outrivers.”

Ross, 55, recently tied up his boat after a disappointing season that saw fresh water kill 56 percent of Mississippi’s shrimp. The plummeting price of shrimp has made it difficult for Ross to find crew members, and instead he’s gone to work on another captain’s boat. After following five generations of fishermen into the business, he’s worried about the direction the industry is headed in.

“All these people, they came over here as immigrants, and they built fishing boats. Now, there’s nobody left to step into my shoes,” Ross said.

Read the full story at the Pulitzer Center

A Flood of Catastrophe: How a Warming Climate and the Bonnet Carré Spillway Threaten the Survival of Coast Fishermen

May 1, 2020 — On a warm, sunny September morning, bait salesman Roscoe Liebig scanned the harbor’s vacant piers and shook his head in disgust. Liebig recalled his usual surroundings: a full parking lot, a line of fishermen hooking their bait, and oysters peaking out in a low tide. That day, all of it was gone.

In a typical year, he’d be outside peddling his shrimp and croakers, a type of bait fish, to fishermen passing by.

“This is catastrophic,” he said. Referencing another historic disaster, Liebig put 2019 in perspective: “BP could blow up a well and you’d do better than this. It’s a dying freaking industry, and this is just the icing on the cake.”

Inside “Roscoe’s Live Bait Works,” sitting on a barge in the Mississippi Sound, Liebig grows restless as he reviews his finances. Sales are down sharply from the previous year, and he worries that making even a small repair or upgrade to his boat could break the bank.

Read the full story at the Pulitzer Center

‘Another punch in the gut’: Gulf Coast shrimpers navigate the coronavirus crisis

May 1, 2020 — David Chauvin of Dulac has worked in the shrimp business since 1986, the year he graduated from high school. His father, grandfather and great grandfather also fished the waters off Louisiana’s Cajun coast.

Gulf Coast shrimpers, who bring in three quarters of the nation’s catch, have been battered with waves of bad luck. Hurricanes. A flood of cheap imports. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Fresh water diversions that kill seafood. And now the coronavirus.

“You always wonder how you’re going to die,” Chauvin said. “I always thought it would have been Thailand or India that would have wiped the domestic shrimp out. I never would have dreamed that it could possibly be a virus.”

Restaurants buy 80% of both imported and domestic shrimp, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance. With restaurants closed or offering only takeout, no one is buying much shrimp. Next month would typically launch the peak of shrimp season as Gulf states begin their annual opening of nearshore waters to shrimping.

The United States caught 289.2 million pounds of shrimp, worth $496.1 million, in 2018, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a full 2019 report has not yet been released). Louisiana shrimpers, working in both state and federal waters, brought in 90.7 million pounds of that catch, followed closely by Texas with 72.1 million pounds.

Read the full story at Houma Today

Effort aims to curb number of abandoned crab traps in Louisiana waters

April 20, 2020 — A new program is targeting the thousands of abandoned crab traps that litter Louisiana’s coastal waterways.

Louisiana Sea Grant, a coastal advocacy and research group based at LSU, has received a $40,000 federal grant to lead the project. The money comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Louisiana leads the nation in the number of commercial blue crab fishermen, with more than 2,500 license holders who have no limit on the number of traps they can operate, Louisiana Sea Grant says in a news release. Some commercial crabbers run as many as 800 to 2,000 traps each.

In addition, Louisiana has more than 6,600 licensed recreational crab fishermen who can operate 10 traps each.

Between commercial and recreational crabbers, there can be more than 66,000 traps in the water, the group says.

“On average, 130 traps per crabber are lost each year due to storms, accidents and intentional abandonment,” Sea Grant says. “The result is in an estimated 11 million crabs lost to ghost fishing by derelict traps. Other fish, such as red drum, black drum and summer flounder also can get stuck in the traps.

Read the full story at Houma Today

LOUISIANA: Here’s how to score some fresh seafood for dinner while helping local fishermen

April 20, 2020 — A program started almost a decade ago to help commercial fishermen locally and across Louisiana’s coast sell their catches directly to customers is paying off for some amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Stay-at-home orders and shutdowns the state has ordered in an effort to slow the deadly virus’s spread have closed or slowed business at many restaurants and markets, wreaking havoc on the supply chain upon which fishermen usually rely. Freezers at most large seafood processing companies were full, or filling up, and labor became unreliable.

That’s where Louisiana Direct Seafood comes in, says Robert Twilley, executive director of Louisiana Sea Grant, which launched the online-based program in 2011.

It helps commercial fishermen, shrimpers, crabbers and oyster harvesters sell a portion of their catch directly to the public at premium prices. And that helps offset sinking dockside prices due to imports, increased fuel costs and the financial struggles resulting from 2019′s spring floods.

Read the full story at Houma Today

Coastal fish populations didn’t crash after the Deepwater Horizon spill – why not?

April 16, 2020 — When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill released 4 to 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, some early projections estimated that the toll on fisheries could reach US$5-10 billion by 2020. Chemicals in crude oil may affect fish and other marine creatures directly, through their toxicity, or indirectly by harming their food or habitat, and the effects can be immediate or long-term.

I began conducting marine science research in the northern Gulf of Mexico in 2006, and was immediately taken by the diversity of fishes, water bodies, habitats and economic sectors along the coast. This region is still home to my favorite saltwater environments – places like the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana, and Florida’s St. Joseph Bay.

From 2006-2009, I worked with teams studying the ecology of fishes that inhabit the tidal salt marshes and underwater seagrass meadows of the northern Gulf. As the Deepwater Horizon spill unfolded, I shared many other people’s deep concerns about the terrible human toll, and the ecological and economic damage to places like the sensitive shores where I had worked.

Ten years later, though, there’s some welcome good news. In our research, my colleagues and I have found that the Deepwater Horizon spill did not appear to cause significant oiling injury to coastal fish populations.

Read the full story at The Conversation

Louisiana seafood businesses unite for broader sales

April 16, 2020 — Fisherman Lance Nacio, of Montegut, LA is trying to keep his struggling seafood business going, one sale at a time.

With curtailed restaurant operations, fishermen have had difficulty selling their catch.

Nacio, a third-generation fisherman, set up a pop-up sale in the parking lot of Randol’s Restaurant in Lafayette. April 9 was his second time to use this approach.

“It’s keeping us afloat. It’s opening our mind on new ways to move product,” he said.

The pop-up sale was promoted on the Louisiana Direct Seafood website and on Facebook.

Gov. John Bel Edwards has promoted the Louisiana Direct Seafood concept. On Facebook, the governor encouraged buying seafood.

Read the full story at The Magnolia Reporter

Louisiana fishers could find relief in coronavirus stimulus package

April 10, 2020 — With restaurants closed, commercial fishers like Sean Heverin, from Leesville, are struggling to sell their catch. Heverin targets red snapper, among other species, which he then sells in bulk to companies that resell the fish to restaurants.

But that supply chain is gone, and retail markets cannot buy in the quantity that Heverin is used to selling.

“It’s been really tough lately with the coronavirus pandemic,” he said. “Lately, we’ve had to try pre-selling the fish before leaving the dock, and most places say no, or that the price is too high.”

Heverin and other Louisiana fishers could find some relief in the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Donald Trump last month. The bill includes $300 million for those in the fishing industry whose businesses have seen losses greater than 35 percent as compared to the prior 5-year average revenue.

But the bill did not outline a process for distributing the funds, said Ashford Rosenberg, a policy analyst for the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

LOUISIANA: Purchasing local seafood is as important, easy as ever Gov. Edwards says

April 8, 2020 — Governor John Bel Edwards recommended Louisiana residents use an online source to find local seafood to support fishermen in the state during the coronavirus crisis.

During the Tuesday afternoon COVID-19 conference, Gov. Edwards said local businesses need your support now more than ever.

“I encourage everyone who is going to go out and buying seafood, purchase seafood that was caught in Louisiana by Louisiana fishermen, or packaged here, or produced here,” Edwards said Tuesday afternoon.

“The state’s fishing industry is still reeling from last year, which was particularly tough with the multiple openings of the Bonnet Carre Spillway and the floodwaters that put too much freshwater in certain areas of the state,” Edwards said.

Louisiana Direct Seafood is a website now available to make finding fresh, local seafood easy for residents.

Read the full story at WBRZ

LSU AgCenter, Louisiana Sea Grant aim to help struggling seafood industry

April 6, 2020 — The LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant are working to help the seafood industry, which is struggling with a massive financial challenge created by the coronavirus pandemic.

Restaurants that use large amounts of seafood are only offering carryout service, and they have drastically scaled back their seafood purchases.

“I’m sure it’s less than 10% of its previous quantity,” said Rusty Gaude, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant fisheries agent in the New Orleans area.

A seafood marketing program, Louisiana Direct Seafood, is one way of helping fishermen and dealers by connecting them directly with consumers.

The Louisiana Direct Seafood program helps consumers buy seafood from fishermen and vendors.

Fishermen in Cameron, Delcambre, Lafourche-Terrebonne and Southshore New Orleans areas post their fresh catch messages on a website. Customers are able to visit the site and see in real time who has fresh product ready for sale, where they are located and their contact information. Consumers can then contact the sellers directly to establish a price, place orders and arrange pickup at the docks or other locations.

Read the full story at The Houma Times