On Monday afternoon, NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico Data Management division released data on October shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico.
Last month, shrimpers landed almost as much shrimp (11.6 million pounds) as was landed in October 2015 (11.7 million pounds). However, the small decrease in volume from last year’s historic low means that less shrimp was landed last month than in any prior October over the last sixteen years for which the Southern Shrimp Alliance has compiled data.
Landings in Texas last month (5.5 million pounds) were substantially higher than those reported in October of last year (3.5 million pounds) and were the highest for any October since 2011. But landings were down in every other part of the Gulf compared to October 2015, with the largest drop coming in Louisiana, from 6.5 million pounds in October 2015 to 4.9 million pounds last month.
Even with another weak month of landings, the total shrimp catch in the Gulf for 2017 (84.8 million pounds) is higher than it was last year (79.0 million pounds). In fact, through the first ten months of this year, more shrimp has been landed in Texas (30.8 million pounds) than in all of 2016 (29.5 million pounds), as well as in Alabama (12.3 million pounds versus 11.7 million pounds) and Mississippi (4.4 million pounds versus 4.2 million pounds).
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