On April 28th, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a Q&A Report to Congressional Committees (GAO-25-107447) regarding how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) prioritizes navigation projects at ports, including dredging to address shoaling, as required by The Water Resources Development Act of 2022 (Pub. L. No. 117-263).
In its report, the GAO found that up until the year 2000, the Army Corps’ Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center collected information regarding commercial fishing landings directly from fishing vessels. These data were then “incorporated . . . into tonnage data to inform the Corps’ navigation project prioritization.” However, after the Army Corps stopped collecting vessel operation reports directly from fishing vessels, the federal agency stopped considering commercial fishing landings in its prioritization determinations altogether. The Army Corps could not explain why this change was made: “Corps officials told us they could not find any documented reason for the change and have not included commercial fish landings in the aggregate tonnage data since then . . .”
Nevertheless, the Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center has continued to compile information regarding U.S. commercial landings of fish, obtaining the information directly from NOAA Fisheries’ website. Yet, the Army Corps does not incorporate this information into its prioritization determination and “has not compiled evidence to support the agency’s decision to continue to omit commercial fishing landings data from tonnage.”
Based on these inquiries, the GAO recommended that the Army Corps conduct (and document) an assessment to determine whether the inclusion of commercial fishing landing data into the tonnage information considered by the agency “could impact the Corps’ prioritization of navigation projects.” If this assessment indicates that there would be a significant impact, the GAO further recommended that the Army Corps “should document a plan to include commercial fish landings data tonnage” in its prioritization analysis. In response, the Army Corps indicated that it concurred with the GAO’s comments.
The Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center’s most recent report, Waterborne Commerce of the United States 2023, identified two ports in Louisiana (Empire-Venice and Intracoastal City) as amongst the top five ports in the United States in terms of volume of commercial fish landings in 2023, with a total of twelve ports used by the U.S. warmwater shrimp industry identified amongst the top fifty (Dulac-Chauvin; Bayou La Batre; Port Arthur; Galveston; Delacroix-Yscloskey; Palacios; Grand Isle; Lafitte-Barataria; Brownsville-Port Isabel; and Wanchese-Stumpy Point).
“Despite the fact that the U.S. commercial fishing industry generates billions of dollars in economic activity every year, we are continuously ignored in the federal government’s determinations about the provision of services,” said John Williams, the executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “The failure to account for commercial fisheries, when combined with heavy regulation of our operations, frustrates every fisherman. President Trump’s prioritization of Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness must begin with an appreciation for the importance of our industry to this country and we are grateful to the GAO for bringing to light circumstances where commercial fishermen have been unjustifiably disregarded.”
Read the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Army Corps of Engineers: Commercial Fishing Data Could Help Inform Budget Process, GAO-25-107447 (Apr. 28, 2025) here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/gao-25-107447.pdf