Fishermen decry lean catch, foreign competition
BY PETER DELUCA
Special to keysnews.com

KEY WEST -- Shrimpers and stone crab fishermen in the Florida Keys say they are hard pressed this year to find an abundant supply of product, or, if they do land a good catch, to find a fair price for it.

The price of foreign, pond-raised shrimp has brought the wholesale price of shrimp down to about $1.00 per pound -- not nearly enough to support a U.S. shrimping operation taking its catch from the ocean, fishery officials say.

According to Bob Jones, executive director of the Southeastern Fisheries Association, imported product from countries such as Vietnam are flooding the market with pond-raised shrimp that have been chemically enhanced to speed up growth and reduce the amount of food needed to support the shrimp until maturity. (I don't recall saying that. What I said was there are numerous chemicals that are allowed by law to be used in aquaculture products. The trick is to make sure that the chemicals are used according to the manufacturers specifications, but maybe Peter de Luca didn't understand the technicalities involved.)

Jones says that 88 percent of all shrimp sold in the U.S. comes from foreign countries. Since U.S. shrimpers have only 12 percent of the market, the future of the domestic industry is bleak.

Another problem, Jones says, is the recurrence of salmonella bacteria in the foreign farm-raised shrimp. He said, "Salmonella is not found in shrimp caught in the ocean," where U.S. shrimpers fish.

Greg DiDomenico, executive director of Monroe County Commercial Fishermen Inc., said that while the crabbers are receiving a "fair" price for their product this year, the catch is down. He thinks that the unseasonably warm weather this fall is probably the cause of that problem, and "now that the weather is beginning to turn cooler, the catch should improve," he said.

Both Jones and DiDomenico are attending a conference in Tampa this week, where marine biologists from around the world are presenting the results of their studies to members of the U.S. fishery associations and other interested groups on how the effects of aquaculture, chemicals, and pollutants running into the oceans surrounding the continental U.S. are impacting the overall soundness of the domestic commercial fisheries.

pdeluca@keysnews.com