September 10, 2020 — U.S. restaurants continue to face closures and bankruptcies as the COVID-19 pandemic makes a major impact on foodservice operators’ profitability.
Houston, Texas-based Luby’s is the latest financial victim of the coronavirus crisis, reporting in a press release that it has implemented a plan of liquidation and dissolution to dissolve the company.
September 2, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries has announced revised reporting requirements for federal seafood dealers in portions of both Texas and Louisiana through 5 October in response to the damage caused by Hurricane Laura.
In a bulletin released 31 August, NOAA Fisheries identified several Texas counties and Louisiana parishes that will be under new reporting requirements due to the determination of “catastrophic conditions” existing in the area. Hurricane Laura hit Southwest Louisiana in the morning of 27 August, bringing with it 150-mile-per-hour winds.
September 1, 2020 — The Gulf fishing fleet docked at or near Cameron, LA bore the brunt of Hurricane Laura as it roared ashore in the early hours of August 27th as a category four storm. In one area alone, ten of the 15 shrimp boats tied-up sank to the bottom of Bayou Contraband after being ravaged by rough waters and constant winds gusting up to 135 mph. The Gulf Seafood Foundation is calling upon government officials in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi for an immediate coordinated seafood specific disaster relief effort for fishermen, seafood processors and the extended seafood family.
“We are calling upon both our state leaders and federal representatives to quickly get monetary help for our fishing communities,” said Raz Halli, president of the Gulf Seafood Foundation. More than 120 miles of Gulf coastline was impacted by the storm, a coastline that is home a variety of commercial fishermen. Even though Mississippi was not impacted by this storm, we are calling upon their representatives to join our effort because their fisheries still have not received compensation for the fresh water diversion that ravished their fisheries last year.”
Sitting a mere three feet above sea level, Cameron has been an epicenter for hurricanes. In 2005 Hurricane Rita hit the city, home to just over 6000 residents, with winds clocked at more than 120 mph. Three years later Hurricane Ike leveled Cameron with a 12-foot storm surge.
August 31, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
KEY MESSAGE:
MORE INFORMATION:
August 4, 2020 — When it comes to business plans during the coronavirus pandemic, the seafood industry has found itself at sea.
“We don’t have a clue,” said Jure Slabic, an oysterman in Galveston, Texas. “We haven’t processed a single oyster since March 23.”
More than most foodstuffs, the seafood industry depends on restaurants that put a premium on freshness. Consequently, the coronavirus shutdowns slammed fishers, leaving boats at the dock, inventory stacked or tossed as debt piles up.
July 10, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
WHAT/WHEN:
NOAA Fisheries announces federal waters from 9 to 200 nautical miles off Texas will open to shrimp trawling beginning 30 minutes after official sunset, local time, on July 15, 2020, corresponding to the time Texas opens its waters to shrimp trawling.
WHY THIS IS HAPPENING:
June 26, 2020 — The darkest days are seemingly in the past for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.
A restoration of the fishery, decades in the making, has blossomed into one of the most recent success stories in conservation.
“We have more snapper now than in anyone’s lifetime,” said Greg Stunz, director of the Harte Research Institute’s Sportfish Center at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
“And they’re big snapper.”
A federal plan to rebuild the fishery by 2032 is well ahead of schedule.
The goal is to increase the spawning potential to 26 percent, which means the stock would produce about a quarter of the eggs that an unfished population would. The estimated spawning biomass of red snapper in the Gulf is currently about 20 percent, a long climb from the sub-2 percent low mark of 1990.
June 9, 2020 — The massive “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is causing up to $2.4 billion dollars in damage to fisheries and marine habitat every year, a new report says.
Covering an area about the size of New Hampshire, the 6,700-square-mile zone of low dissolved oxygen has long been the bane of shrimpers and other fishers off the coasts of Louisiana and eastern Texas. A report released this month from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the first comprehensive assessment of the dead zone’s economic impact, and warns the root problem — agricultural pollution from the Mississippi River — is likely to grow in severity as the world’s climate changes.
“Gulf Coast communities know that the dead zone impacts their livelihoods, but research has never put a dollar value on its damage to the fishing industry,” said Rebecca Boehm, a UCS economist and the report’s author. “This study quantifies both the amount of nitrogen flowing to the Gulf from farms upstream, and the toll it is taking economically on the foundation of the Gulf fishing industry.”
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.
April 23, 2020 — After the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded a decade ago this month, killing 11 workers and spewing a massive black curtain of crude oil across the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of first responders and cleanup workers arrived on the scene. So too did an army of scientists. Aboard seagoing research vessels and wading along beaches and marshes, they came to assess the catastrophe and track it over time. British Petroleum, owner of the rig, agreed to fund a scientific stimulus package of $500 million just a few weeks after the April 20, 2010, blowout.
The 134 million gallons of oil devastated wildlife from Texas to Florida, killing thousands of marine mammals, such as dolphins and sea turtles, according to federal officials, and destroying shoreline and underwater habitats for commercially important fish, crabs, shrimp, and oysters. More than 25,000 fishermen and seafood industry workers were suddenly out of work, with a 10-year price tag of $4.5 billion in total economic losses, according to a 2019 study by a trio of researchers funded in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.