On Tuesday, the Fishery Monitoring Branch of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center released shrimp landings data from the Gulf of Mexico for January 2019.
Last month, 2.4 million pounds of shrimp were landed by commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico. This was a significant increase from the 1.9 million pounds of shrimp harvested in January 2018, but still well below the prior seventeen-year historical average for January of 4.0 million pounds.
Just as in 2018, reporting for shrimp landings in Louisiana was substantially below historic norms. At 548,000 pounds, the volume of shrimp reported as harvested in Louisiana was over 70 percent below the prior seventeen-year historical average of 1.8 million pounds. Shrimp landings in Texas, at 754,000 pounds, were much closer to their historical average of 924,000 pounds for the month of January.
The largest amount of shrimp landed in the Gulf last month was in Alabama. At 843,000 pounds, more shrimp was landed in Alabama last month then in any prior January going back to 2007. In contrast, shrimp landings on the west coast of Florida (193,000 pounds) and Mississippi (104,000 pounds) were the lowest reported for any January in the dataset maintained by the Southern Shrimp Alliance going back to 2002.
After reporting ex-vessel prices for the eastern Gulf (the west coast of Florida) in December, no ex-vessel prices for the eastern Gulf were reported by NOAA for January. For the northern (Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi) and western (Texas) Gulf, ex-vessel prices for large shrimp – U15 count, 15-20 count, and 21-25 count headless, shell-on – were generally higher in January 2019 than they were in January of 2018. At the same time, ex-vessel prices for smaller shrimp – 26-30 count, 31-35 count, 35-40 count, and 41-50 count headless, shell-on – were generally significantly lower last month than they were in January of 2018.
Please click the following link to view SSA’s compilation and summary of January 2002-2019 Shrimp Landings and Ex-Vessel Prices for January 2001-2019:
https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/January-2019-Landings.pdf