USMSFP - U.S. Marine Shrimp Farming Program

Immature shrimp prompt Gulf of Mexico shrimping ban

A weeks long ban on trawling in Mexico’s Laguna Madre is designed to give shrimp time to mature to full size and migrate into the Gulf of Mexico.

Immature shrimp can hardly be sold for bait, some shrimpers say, prompting the ban that was scheduled to begin on Tuesday. The season is expected to reopen July 5. A ban on shrimping in Mexican Gulf waters has been in place since May 1 and will continue through July 31.

Because of tiny shrimp in the Laguna Madre, the season there has been pushed back. It is expected to reopen on July 5.

“It’s designed to let the smaller shrimp get larger,” Sergio Leal, a biologist at SAGARPA, the Mexican agency responsible for agriculture, livestock, rural development, fisheries and food in Cuidad Victoria, Mexico, told the Brownsville Herald in Tuesday’s editions.

“It’s important that the shrimpers respect it,” said Leal.

Violating the Gulf ban could bring fines of between $450 and $9,000 or up to six months in jail.

The shrimping season in Texas closed on May 15. Shrimping is expected to resume in Texas waters sometime in July.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Coastal Fisheries Division, like SAGARPA, samples gulf shrimp to gauge their size and determine when to end and start each season.

Shrimping is an essential livelihood for thousands of families in the coastal communities south of Lauro Villar Beach to the port of El Mezquital, San Fernando and in Veracruz state.

We have been getting tiny shrimp that the people don’t want to buy. Not even to use for bait,” said Pedro Martinez, an El Mezquital resident who shrimps in the Laguna Madre.

He said a small bag of bait shrimp sells for about$1 but a pound of table shrimp can start at $6 or more.

“I think this is necessary to let the shrimp get a little bigger,” Martinez, 31, said.

Shrimpers in El Mezquital had mixed reactions Monday about closing the season. Alvaro Navarro is president of the Cooperative San Fernando, a fishing association of about 120 fishermen in the area.

“Our government institute a closure based on some bureaucratic nonsense,” Navarro, 29, said and complained that the ban will benefit those who trawl in open waters, not bay shrimpers like him. He pointed out that SAGARPA officials open the gulf shrimping season before closing the bay trawling. “They generally open the offshore before the bay season and that benefits the big seafood companies rather than those who live on the gulf shores,” he said. “It would be better if they gave us (bay shrimpers) more time to get prepared for the shrimping ban,” he said.