Longtime Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance Retires

]Deputy Director takes helm of leading U.S. shrimp industry coalition

After more than two decades of transforming the U.S. shrimp industry, John Williams retired as Executive Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, effective December 31, 2025. Blake Price succeeds him, with Williams continuing to serve in an advisory capacity through June 2026 to ensure a smooth transition.

Williams, a then-shrimper based in Tarpon Springs, Florida, helped create the Southern Shrimp Alliance and served as its first secretary. After successfully petitioning the U.S. government for antidumping duties, Williams moved from an industry volunteer role to the Executive Director position.

“The U.S. shrimp industry owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to John for his work and leadership, which has saved this industry from complete collapse many times,” said Steve Bosarge, president of SSA. “He leaves us in very capable hands at the end of a year that skyrocketed the U.S. shrimp industry’s visibility and influence.”

Many of the successes over the past two decades are based on Williams’s ability to tell the shrimper’s story and build relationships with government officials, fishermen, scientists, and non-profit organizations. Under his leadership, SSA successfully worked to:

Preserve access to U.S. shrimping grounds

• • Prevented Gulf Closures: Stopped imminent closure of critical Gulf grounds (brown, white, and pink shrimp) by demonstrating that bycatch reduction goals for red snapper could be met by sharing management burdens with recreational fishermen. SSA actively engages with Gulf and South Atlantic management councils to prove the industry’s compliance with Endangered Species Act mandates, such as protections for Green Sea Turtles, Rice’s Whales, Smalltooth Sawfish, Giant Manta Rays, and Critical Habitats, protecting shrimpers’ ability to operate.

• • Offshore Wind Mitigation: Used Electronic Logbook (ELB) data to convince the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to rescind 12 out of 13 proposed wind energy lease areas in the Gulf.

• • Reopened Rock Shrimp Grounds: After a decade-long fight, new scientific mapping proved that coral was absent in specific “protected” areas, leading the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to restore access to historically important rock shrimp fishing grounds.

Reduce regulatory burdens on U.S. shrimpers

• • Corrected NIOSH Safety Data: Challenged erroneous calculations by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that labeled shrimping as the “most dangerous” fishery. Instead of resulting in severe new vessel mandates, NIOSH concluded that, given the size of the fishery, it is one of the safest.

• • Secured a Permanent EPA Discharge Permit Exemption: Prevented the draconian requirement for shrimping vessels to secure EPA permits for normal water discharges, avoiding heavy administrative and financial burdens on vessel owners.

• • Avoided Operation Limits: Supported NMFS in rejecting a petition filed by several environmental groups to impose a 10-knot speed limit and to prohibit nighttime vessel operations in a large area of the northeastern Gulf to protect Rice’s Whales.

• • Obtained Research and Equipment Funding: Secured millions of dollars to modernize the Electronic Logbook Program, keeping the industry compliant with environmental laws while covering the cost of equipment and installation.

Address Unfair Trade

• • Ended U.S. Support for Thai Union Shrimp Project: U.S. Treasury opposed an Asian Development Bank (ADB) project to fund $150 million in Thai shrimp production, marking the first time in history that the United States has opposed a shrimp aquaculture project at an international financial institution. SSA’s databases on U.S. voting and advocacy have demonstrated the harm of funding foreign aquaculture.

• • Exposed Force Labor Abuses in India: Successfully petitioned to have Indian shrimp added to the Department of Labor’s List of Goods Produced by Child or Forced Labor. Similar findings on forced labor in Thailand, combined with a disease outbreak, have made the once-dominant supplier of shrimp to the U.S. market a minor supplier today.

• • Enhanced Imported Food Safety: Secured millions in repeated federal appropriations for the FDA to increase testing of imported shrimp for banned antibiotics and conduct field visits, while providing unique analysis of shrimp refusals that drives continued action and attention.

• • Combatted Environmental Double Standards: Advocated for holding foreign shrimpers meet turtle mitigation requirements and abide by U.S. fishing regulations.

• • Secured Trade Remedies: Led the landmark petitions resulting in antidumping duties on shrimp from six countries, defending them and other trade actions in appeals nearly 200 times since. The duties stabilized steeply falling import prices for a decade, and shrimpers would be harmed by their removal.

• • Included shrimp in the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), ensuring importers are permitted, U.S. citizens, and not foreign paper companies, setting reporting and recordkeeping requirements. This program adds transparency to address IUU fishing and forced labor in foreign supply chains, and holds importers accountable for owed duties.

• • Added Transparency, Accountability to Shrimp Imports: From dusted shrimp to other transshipment plots, SSA has fought to make trade remedies work as intended, repeatedly providing training to enforcement agencies on fraud identification and collaborating to close loopholes.

• • Minimized China’s Role in the U.S. Shrimp Market: China is no longer a major supplier of shrimp to the U.S. market, thanks to a combination of actions pursued by SSA
    • Blocked Transshipped Chinese Shrimp: Identified a Chinese scheme to bypass U.S. risk-based food safety protocols and duty payments by shipping through Malaysia, and worked with FDA and CBP to end the practice.
    • Included Shrimp in Section 301 Duties: Documented the need for Section 301 duties on Chinese shrimp, which dramatically decreased imports.
    • Secured Seafood as High-Priority Sector for Enforcement under Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act:  Supported the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force in taking decisive action to combat the exploitation of the Uyghur people in Chinese seafood processing plants.

Enhance the Industry

• • Exposed False Advertising: From country-of-origin labeling in retail to restaurant labeling laws, SSA has funded the research, testing, and public outreach in eight states to expose mislabeling and substitution of U.S. wild-caught shrimp with imported products. SSA supports strengthening COOL through the LABEL Act.

• • Requested Disaster Assistance Declarations: Assisted U.S. shrimp fisheries in the development of fishery disaster assistance requests. SSA continues to work to expedite both the process of declaring the disaster and of Congress appropriating the funds to provide the assistance. It also seeks to expand the program to economic disasters.

• • Promoted Trade Adjustment Assistance: Expanded eligibility of the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers to shrimpers, allowing thousands of small, family-run shrimping businesses to receive valuable technical and financial assistance before the program was defunded. SSA continues to work on reviving the program.  

• • Influenced the Deepwater Horizon Compensation Formula: Advocated for the $2.3B Seafood Compensation Program and a revised calculation that reopened the claims of shrimpers who accepted final payments.

• • Secured Section 32 USDA Purchases: Secured federal buy-ups of domestic shrimp for school lunch and food bank programs to stabilize crashing dockside prices. Since 2020, the USDA has made five rounds of purchases of U.S. shrimp, totaling 1.14M cases, through Section 32 funding, supported by SSA’s advocacy and requests for funding.

• • Ensured U.S. Shrimp Promotion: Blocked efforts to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to promote America’s consumption of imported seafood, ensuring the National Seafood Strategy prioritizes U.S. producers. 

While far from a comprehensive list, the nonprofit’s achievements and breadth of work during Williams’s tenure have had a significant, direct impact on all shrimpers operating today. From high-level legal petitions to boots-on-the-ground scientific data, SSA has led the industry’s fight for shrimpers’ livelihoods for the past twenty-four years.

“What makes SSA different – and successful – has been driven by John’s commitment to solidly researched data and cooperative problem solving,” said Bosarge. “SSA’s success has come from John’s insistence on engaging in the analysis that no one else is doing to demonstrate problems and find solutions.”

Known for rarely taking vacation time, Williams applied the hardworking ethic of a shrimper to the tireless fight for a level playing field for the U.S. shrimp industry.

“John’s work supported the livelihoods of every single U.S. shrimper,” said Price. “It is with great honor that I now get to help this iconic American industry continue SSA’s mission. The goal isn’t to simply see U.S. shrimpers survive, but to see this essential industry thrive.”

Williams looks forward to spending more time with his wife, Kathy, and great-grandchildren in his well-earned retirement.

The SSA Board honored Williams and longtime policy and fisheries management consultant Glenn Delaney, whose skills attained many of the above successes, with a joint retirement party at Bama Seafood in St. Petersburg, Florida, before its annual meeting in January. SSA expresses profound gratitude for their dedicated service to the U.S. shrimp industry.