Yesterday, the Fishery Monitoring Branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center released preliminary shrimp landings data from the Gulf of Mexico for June 2022. In addition, NOAA continued its release of preliminary shrimp landings data from the South Atlantic, a practice begun in March 2022.
As with the agency’s reporting since July of 2021, the numbers released by NOAA for landings in the Gulf in June include substantial revisions to the agency’s initial preliminary reporting of shrimp landings in previous years. These revisions reflect changes to past preliminary reporting such that they now reflect the actual, final shrimp landings data ultimately reported by the states. Because the figures reported for the month of June 2022 are preliminary in nature, the Southern Shrimp Alliance has continued to present these data in the historical context of the agency’s past initial reporting of preliminary figures. This means that in the summary charts prepared by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, the historical figures for the month of June in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 do not correspond to the numbers now being reported by NOAA. Instead, the figures reflect the initial preliminary reporting of NOAA made at the time.
The data released by NOAA did not include any information regarding shrimp landings in Louisiana, South Carolina, or North Carolina for the month of June. However, the incomplete data indicates that, at 4.1 million pounds, the amount of shrimp harvested in Texas marked the largest volume of shrimp landed in the state for the month since June 2009. Further, at 1.6 million pounds, shrimp landings in Alabama were 37.5 percent above the prior twenty-year historic average.
As previously noted, NOAA has now revised its reporting of ex-vessel prices. The agency no longer reports ex-vessel prices for three different areas of the Gulf of Mexico (Western, Northern, and Eastern). Instead, NOAA now reports a single ex-vessel price for the entirety of Gulf of Mexico and, separately, a single ex-vessel price for the South Atlantic. As the result of the simplification of NOAA’s reporting, the Southern Shrimp Alliance will now track and present prices for all count sizes used by the agency (U15, 15/20, 21/25, 26/30, 31/35, 36/40, and 41/50).
A review of the ex-vessel pricing data for the month of June indicates that in the Gulf of Mexico, ex-vessel prices for all count sizes were reported to have been lower in June 2022 than in June 2021.
Please click the following link to view the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s compilation and summary of June 2002-2022 shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico, June 2018-2022 shrimp landings in the South Atlantic, and ex-vessel prices for June 2018-2022 in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/June-2022-Landings.pdf