NOAA has now published landing volume data for shrimp caught in the Gulf of Mexico for the first month of 2015.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance’s analysis of NOAA data indicates that shrimp landings for the month of January were the second lowest for any January since 2002.
For the entire Gulf of Mexico, the shrimp industry landed 3.3 million pounds of shrimp in January 2015. Although this was improvement over last January, when only 3.1 million pounds of shrimp was landed in the Gulf, this year’s harvest was a million pounds below the historical average for the month (around 4.3 million pounds).
The NOAA report did not include shrimp landed in Mississippi for the second month in a row, as there were an insufficient number of dealers reporting data for that month. However, as Mississippi has historically averaged less than 300,000 pounds of shrimp landings in January, these amounts, even if included, are not likely to account for the shortfall.
The January figures reverse the trend over the last several months of strong production that had helped compensate for weak numbers in the first half of 2014.
Landings in the states of both Louisiana and Alabama were up significantly from 2014: 1.8 million pounds versus 1.3 million pounds in the former, and 469,000 pounds versus 194,000 pounds in the latter. But landings in Texas were down compared to last year: 648,000 pounds versus 902,000 pounds.
The limited production in January corresponds with another strong month of ex-vessel prices as reported by NOAA. Looking across count sizes, ex-vessel prices remained at or near historic highs in 2015, with medium (26-30) and small (41-50) count size prices reaching the highest levels reported in data available for review going back to 2001.
Please click the following link to view SSA’s compilation and summary of January 2015 Shrimp Landings and Ex-Vessel Prices:
shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/January-2015-Landings.pdf