Shrimpers Still Waiting For Season To Open

The brown shrimp season still has not opened in Mississippi waters and it’s taking its toll on local fisherman and processors. MPB’s Phoebe Judge has more.

It will be another week at the earliest before the brown shrimp season opens on the Coast, and that will make this the latest opening since 1975. Shrimp have to reach a legal size before the season can open, and a combination of a lot of rain in March and low salinity counts in the water have slowed down the shrimp’s growth. That means that hundreds of commercial shrimpers in Mississippi don’t have work. Traci Floyd is Shrimp and Crab Bureau director at the Department of Marine Resources,

“These fishermen have a very strong work ethic, so they are wanting to get out there and work, you know they have bills to pay they were counting on the season being open by now, but you know Mother Nature is just not agreeing.”

Commercial Shrimper Frank Parker is sitting on his couch at his home in Biloxi,

“I’ve been doing this almost twenty years and I never remember sitting at home, on what’s today June 18th.”

When Parker realized the shrimping season in Mississippi was going to be delayed, he tried shrimping in Louisiana for a few days, but the cost of gas and the low price the shrimp was selling for didn’t make it worth it. So he is just waiting,

“You make fifty to sixty percent of your income for the year in the first couple of months of the shrimp season. So if it is not too good now the outlook for the future isn’t very promising either. You just tighten up your belt and prepare, but it’s hard. It’s been real hard.”

The shrimp season typically brings in 11 million pounds each year in Mississippi, but even without the delayed opening of the season the shrimping industry continues to be plagued with the growing number of imported shrimp from places like China.