This afternoon, NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico Data Management division released data providing information on August shrimp landings for the Gulf of Mexico.
For the month, over 16.7 million pounds of shrimp were reported as landed in the Gulf of Mexico, up from 14.2 million pounds in August of last year. Total landings were 6.4 percent below the prior fifteen year historical average (17.9 million pounds). Shrimp landings on the West Coast of Florida, 137,000 pounds, were the lowest reported for any August in the sixteen years of data compiled by the Southern Shrimp Alliance. Shrimp landings in Mississippi, 591,000 pounds, were the second lowest reported for any August over that same timeframe. In contrast, shrimp landings in Alabama, 2.5 million pounds, were the second highest for any August over the last sixteen years.
Through the first eight months of 2017, 65.9 million pounds of shrimp has been landed in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the highest total reported since 2013, but still 8.4 percent below the prior fifteen year historical average (72.0 million pounds). Louisiana has been the largest contributor to this year’s total, at 24.8 million pounds, followed by Texas at 22.1 million pounds, and then Alabama at an unprecedented level of 10.4 million pounds – a total that is 79.0 percent higher than the prior fifteen year historical average of 5.8 million pounds.
The ex-vessel pricing data reported by NOAA for August is unusual. No prices were available from the west coast of Florida because of “Insufficient Dealers’ Reporting.” Ex-vessel prices in the northern Gulf (Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi) significantly deteriorated across all count sizes compared to August 2016. But the reported ex-vessel prices in the western Gulf (Texas) were substantially higher for all count sizes in August 2017 than they were in August 2016.
Please click the following link to view SSA’s compilation and summary of August 2002-2017 Shrimp Landings and Ex-Vessel Prices for August 2001-2017: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/August-2017-Landings.pdf