Last week, 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 September 2022. In addition, NOAA continued its release of preliminary shrimp landings data from the South Atlantic, a practice begun in March of this year.
As with the agency’s reporting since July of last year, the numbers released by NOAA for landings in the Gulf in September 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 September 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 and has not amended the historic charts to reflect the revised, final figures currently being reported for previous years. This means that in the summary charts prepared by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, the historical figures for the month of September 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, Georgia, or South Carolina for the month of September. However, the incomplete data indicates that at least 6.9 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the Gulf of Mexico, and another 1.3 million pounds were landed in the South Atlantic in September.
Over the first three quarters of 2022, over 75.5 million pounds of shrimp was landed in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest preliminary amount reported for Gulf shrimp landings over that time period since 2013. Moreover, the preliminary figures reported for 2022 are close to the final landings data reported for the first nine months of 2021, when 76.7 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the Gulf.
In addition, NOAA’s preliminary figures show that at least another 6.1 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the South Atlantic in 2022.
NOAA has revised its reporting of ex-vessel prices, such that 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 now tracks and summarizes 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 September indicates that in the Gulf of Mexico, ex-vessel prices for all count sizes were reported to have been lower in September 2022 than in September 2021. For 41/50 count size shrimp, the ex-vessel prices reported for September were the lowest reported for that shrimp since at least 2018.
No ex-vessel prices for any count size in September 2022 were reported for the South Atlantic.
Please click the following link to view the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s compilation and summary of September 2002-2022 shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico, September 2018-2022 shrimp landings in the South Atlantic, and ex-vessel prices for September 2018-2022 in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/September-2022-Landings.pdf