Here We Go Again (Friends Don't Let Friends Eat Imported Shrimp)

[Wado II]

Fighting dumping of imports again. Plus, the foreign farms get their financing from guess who. US lawmakers introduce Save Our Shrimpers Act to ban federal funding of foreign shrimp farming, imports | SeafoodSource

[2Ws]

All part of the plan....run the local shrimpers out then replace with this imported crap....

[Wado II]

Been going on for years. Lots of politics involved, NAFTA, sanctions being lifted. Clintonomics, even Mosbacher when he was Commerce Secretary under Bush. Just can't compete with imports in the pricing end. Got them beat on quality just can't supply enough to run the imports off and that's what sets the prices for packer shrimp.

[Bocephus]

I'm guessing the day will come when we can't harvest any seafood out of the bays, not legally anyway.

[Doug G]

Just another example of our worst enemy, our own government. Democrats and Republicans are behind the movement to destroy this country. Sad, sad, sad

[Wado II]

Back when I was making a living in the bays TPWD, CCA even the big Gulf Boat fleet owners wanted us bay operators out. Pretty bad when some of your people you thought were your friends were lobbying against you. It ended up bringing us all together finally once we were all put in the same category. The number of bay boats now is nowhere near what it was in those years. I can't comment on the amount of shrimp caught in the bays most of the guys I know are either dead or in rocking chairs now.

[Hooked]

Back when I was making a living in the bays TPWD, CCA even the big Gulf Boat fleet owners wanted us bay operators out. Pretty bad when some of your people you thought were your friends were lobbying against you. It ended up bringing us all together finally once we were all put in the same category. The number of bay boats now is nowhere near what it was in those years. I can't comment on the amount of shrimp caught in the bays most of the guys I know are either dead or in rocking chairs now.

I can remember on opening day of shrimp season on Galveston Bay you would see hundreds (maybe slight exaggeration) of shrimpers from the Kemah shoreline. Now, maybe a couple. It's sad what CCA and other groups did to the shrimping industry locally. These days I don't think there's near the amount of shrimp out there due to environmental damage to the bay.

[SmithRanchZ]

The oft quoted statistic is that roughly 90% of the shrimp consumed in this country is imported.

Assuming that's roughly accurate, no way to expand our wild caught shrimp harvest to supply the domestic market. It would require 10x the current harvest.

To even approach those numbers, we would have to massively change our wet lands and bays. Or, large scale shrimp farming, with all the challenges associated with that.

[Wado II]

Can't catch enough with nets to supply the all you can eat buffets and fast food joints making popcorn shrimp baskets. Seafood used to be a delicacy it still is if you go to a good restaurant with real chefs or fry cooks that know what they are doing. And they buy quality fish and shrimp none of the stuff grown in sewage at least I hope they don't. Shrimp isn't on shopping lists like prepared foods and one dish meals for soccer moms and millennials that need a recipe to boil water. Small domestic shrimp once supplied our peeled meat market but discharge restrictions and labor pretty much shut down the peeling plants here. I sold small bay brown shrimp as low as 25 cents a pound but I didn't make a habit of it I would switch rigs and try to catch big white shrimp in the summer and what few little brownies I caught went to bait dealers or put them against a fuel bill. Big mesh nets don't catch too many little shrimp unless they are thick. I caught lots of live bait when commercial docks weren't paying anything for small shrimp. When TPWD and the other groups were pushing for us to go to a 2:00 pm closure they upped the limit to 600 pounds we were licensed for 500 but there was problems with that dealing with two separate licenses. It was all BS all laws like this do is push boats to where the shrimp density is highest. Before the 600 pound limits prices stayed a little higher I got as much as two dollars a pound for 60-70 count shrimp I worked by myself and fuel was cheap. I went through some lean times no way I would torture myself like that now.

[Landlocked]

I couldn’t tell you how many shrimpers I used to see running around in front of my place in Trinity Bay…. But it was a lot.

Any of yall remember Jerry Crowley shrimping for bait shrimp…in a suit and tie???!!!

[Waterguy]

There was an old shrimper at grassy point and his wife Lilly they where wonderful people we always enjoyed talking to her it was a rough life but she always had a smile on her face. Those where great times we bought many pounds of shrimp from them.

[Wado II]

Lilly and Ed Machachek. I sold my last boat to their son Edward or Scooter as we called him. She really had a good sense of business I would stop by and talk to her after I retired. I'm not sure I spelled the last name correctly I apologize if it's wrong. My dad bought his first little shrimp boat at Grassy Point when Bob Rhoades owned the place. Around 1977-78 little plywood shrimp boat called the Four D's. All of Bob and his wife's daughters first name started with a D. Bob sold the place I don't think Lilly and Ed bought it then we had just started our camp in Carancahua Bay. Long time ago lots of memories.