Saving Seafood

US shrimpers seek import crackdown over sea turtles

September 5, 2024 — Two U.S. shrimping groups have asked the Biden administration to suspend imports of wild shrimp from Guatemala and Peru, saying the two countries have failed to comply with longstanding State Department requirements to use fishing gear that avoids sea turtle entanglements.

The organizations further argue that lax monitoring and enforcement of international sea turtle protection standards, adopted by Congress in 1989 and enforced under what’s known as the Section 609 program, have allowed a half-dozen other countries to dump illegally caught shrimp into U.S. markets at the expense of sea turtles.

The groups also said the certification program’s rules are applied inconsistently across countries and are poorly enforced. While some major shrimp exporters like India have improved compliance under closer monitoring, many other countries have either not adopted sea turtle protection rules or ignored their enforcement, they said.

Read the full article at E&E News

From Bubba Gump to bust? American shrimpers face extinction

January 31, 2024 — On a chilly December morning, the captain of the Miss Patti is ready to throw his lines and go shrimping – well, almost. Brian Jordan’s deckhand is in a foul mood, and it’s no wonder why. Is any of this worth it?

Here on the tiny working waterfront of Tybee Island, Georgia, the hesitancy is logical. Shrimp prices cratered this year, and hundreds of boats from Brownsville, Texas, to Harkers Island, North Carolina, remained dockside.

The problem hasn’t been a lack of shrimp or the price of diesel. Instead, freezers across the United States are filled to the gills. A glut of imported shrimp has dropped the price to about half of what shrimp boats received in the 1980s.

At stake is the livelihood of Mr. Jordan and shrimpers like him nationwide. They can’t compete with overseas rivals who raise and harvest shrimp in lower-cost “aquaculture’’ farms. There, baby shrimp essential to the marine life food chain are raised in artificial saltwater ponds, then harvested in bulk and sold for reduced prices around the world.

Because shrimp is the most valuable marine product traded in the world today – growing from a $10.6 billion industry in 2005 to over $60 billion in 2022 – the shift is consequential on many fronts. The practice is generating substantial income for developing countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Brazil, Ecuador, and Bangladesh.

But the trend, some experts say, hurts more than just seafaring boaters like Mr. Jordan: Much of the overseas aquaculture industry is damaging to the environment, they say

Read the full article at the Christian Science Monitor

Georgia shrimpers struggling as demand for local shrimp declines

September 18, 2023 — Georgia shrimpers say they’re struggling. Several factors have led to the drop in shrimp prices and lowered demand for local shrimp. This is leading one group and some local lawmakers to try to get them some help.

Roy Reagan has shrimped for decades. He says he’s worried about the industry’s future.

“I wanted my son to keep doing this, he works with my best friend here, he’d be fourth generation in my family, and I don’t know that he’s going to make it, he’s going to have to find something else to do… if we don’t get some kind of change,” said shrimper Roy Reagan.

Members of Georgia Commercial Fishermans Association say an influx of imported shrimp is to blame.

According to the FDA, 94% of seafood sold in the U.S. is imported, and shrimp accounts for the largest percentage within that, and they’re sold for much lower prices.

Read the full article at WTOC

Imported shrimp floods market putting local fisheries at risk

September 14, 2023 — Shrimpers throughout the South say their industry is in crisis and they’re asking the government to step in.

They want a Federal Disaster Declaration on fisheries – after they say an influx of foreign unregulated shrimp has flooded the U.S. market.

Lifelong shrimper, Marty Collins said, “We’re to the bottom and we can’t make it no more, because we can’t pay our bills. Basically, our “take-home” isn’t taking us home anymore.”

Marty Collins has been a shrimper for over 50 years.

He says foreign shrimp, imported during the pandemic, has prevented him and other local shrimpers from selling what they catch.

Read the full article at WSAV

Court rejects allegations of N.C. shrimpers polluting waters

August 28, 2023 — A recent federal appeals court decision rejected arguments that North Carolina shrimpers are violating the federal Clean Water by discharging their bycatch overboard.

Seen as a significant win for the shrimpers as well as all commercial and recreational fishermen, the unanimous decision by the Fourth District Court of Appeals was handed down Aug. 7. The three-judge panel affirmed a previous lower court decision from September 2021 that was appealed by the plaintiffs, the NC Fisheries Reform Group.

The NC Fisheries Reform Group, recreational fisherman Joseph Albea and other anglers, had filed a citizen lawsuit alleging that certain named shrimpers in North Carolina are violating the federal Clean Water Act by discharging their bycatch overboard.

The anglers argued that bycatch being thrown back into the water is a pollutant and disturbing sediment with trawl nets is dredging, either of which, the group contended, would require commercial shrimpers to obtain a Clean Water Act permit.

The fisheries reform group, a Wilmington, N.C.-based nonprofit established in 2020, “to change how the State of North Carolina manages our public trust marine resources,” filed the lawsuit against Capt. Gaston LLC, Esther Joy Inc., Hobo Seafood Inc., Lady Samaira Inc., Trawler Capt. Alfred Inc., Trawler Christina Ann Inc., and Trawlers Garland and Jeff Inc.

The appeals court heard arguments on the case in fall 2022. This month the judges threw back the reform group’s claim.

“The Act forbids the unpermitted discharge of a pollutant. Returning bycatch to the ocean is not discharging a pollutant, so throwing it overboard without a permit is not forbidden by the Act,” Judge Julius Richardson wrote in the court’s opinion. “Likewise, because the trawl nets merely kick up sediment already present in the Sound, their use does not discharge any pollutants either. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of Fisheries Reform (Group) complaint.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission likely to keep Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery closed

November 8, 2016 — Maine shrimpers are all but resigned to another year of being unable to pursue their quarry in the Gulf of Maine, with a regulatory board set to decide this week whether to allow a season this winter.

Maine shrimp are fished in the Gulf of Maine and were a popular winter seafood for years, but regulators shut the fishery down after a collapse during the 2013 fishing season, and it has remained closed since. The shrimp have struggled to rebuild populations as waters have warmed.

A board of the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is set to decide Thursday whether fishing will be allowed this year. A committee of scientists has advised the board it’s not a good idea, with temperatures off New England inhospitable to the shrimp.

Spencer Fuller, a shrimp and lobster buyer with Cozy Harbor Seafood in Portland, said his company was once the largest processor of Maine shrimp in the country, and it has suffered. He said that he is prepared for another year of closure, but that it will send residual troubles through Maine’s seafood industry.

“All you have to do is look back to the history of shrimp here in the state of Maine and the contributions it has made over the last 60 years,” Fuller said. “It’s a big deal not only for us, but for the wharfs we deal with, markets we deal with.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

LOUISIANA: Shrimpers may face new turtle-protection rules

September 14, 2016 — New rules aimed at preventing endangered sea turtles from getting caught and killed in shrimp nets could have an impact on local fishermen.

Federal officials are revising the rules dealing with turtle-excluder devices used in shrimp nets in a court settlement with an international conservation group. In its lawsuit, Oceana alleged that the federal government violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to:

— Determine whether shrimping in the Southeast puts sea turtles at risk of extinction.

— Monitor fishing’s impact on sea turtles.

— Set a limit on how many sea turtles can be caught and killed.

As part of the settlement, the federal government agreed to propose revised regulations by Dec. 15.

“Year after year, the federal government allows tens of thousands of sea turtles to drown in shrimp trawl nets in the Gulf and Atlantic in violation of federal law,” Oceana campaign director Lora Snyder said Monday in a news release. “Oceana is pleased that the Obama administration has finally recognized its responsibility to take action to recover these amazing and vulnerable creatures before it’s too late, and we hope the rule will do just that.”

Read the full story at Houma Today 

BP Drops $1 Billion Seafood Industry Spill Payments Fight

May 3, 2016 — After fighting for more than two years to avoid paying almost $1 billion in oil spill damages to Gulf Coast shrimpers, oystermen and seafood processors it claimed didn’t exist, BP Plc has thrown in the towel.

“We have withdrawn our claims seeking an injunction against payments by the Seafood Program so the program can be concluded,” Geoff Morrell, a BP spokesman, said in an e-mail Tuesday. The company will keep pursuing fraud claims against lawyer Mikal Watts and his firm, Morrell said. Watts was indicted for allegedly making false claims in connection with the BP spill.

A federal judge in New Orleans Monday allowed BP to drop its bid to avoid paying the second half of $2.3 billion in compensation promised to seafood interests harmed by the blown-out well. The subsea gusher pumped more than 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, closing fisheries and blackening the shores of five states.

Read the full story at Bloomberg