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Seafood means shrimp in Texas
Published October 6, 2009
Howdy! Has it started to rain again? Let’s hope. October is time for the Brazoria County Fair and National Seafood Month.
Shrimp is King:
In Texas, seafood means shrimp. We land more dollars for shrimp than any other state. That’s because most of it is big shrimp, and this doesn’t happen just because the shrimp are from a big state.
The offshore or Gulf industry and our own Freeport shrimp leaders, Isabel and the late Wright “Pappy” Gore Sr. of Western Seafood, started lobbying Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in the late 1970s for what became known as the Texas Closure.
These forward thinkers realized shrimp were an annual crop, and if we could hold off the harvest until around the Fourth of July, the shrimp would be much larger and more valuable. Early Texas Sea Grant College research supported this when the life cycle of the white shrimp was documented by work done of Texas in the early 1970s.
Must have the estuary:
All marine shrimp and about 90 percent of marine organisms spawn — lay eggs — in the offshore waters, and they move into the estuaries by the tides and winds. Here in the nutrient-rich waters of our back bays, the larval shrimp, crabs and fish grow to subadults.
For brown shrimp, this happens from about December to early July. For redfish, it takes three to four years to obtain the size and maturity to move offshore and complete the cycle.
Now, one might think the Texas Closure was a no-brainer, but 30 years ago, there were almost as many against the closure as for it. The first closure was implemented in 1981 on a trial basis.
That year, so many shrimp were caught off Texas the fish houses quickly ran out of ice, and boats had to wait for days before they could return to fishing. I think everyone thought they had hit on the key to the future of the shrimp fishery. They caught big shrimp and a lot of them.
Catching the same amount:
The Texas Closure has continued since then, and it continues to be reviewed annually. On the long-term average, we are still catching the same amount of shrimp as back in the early days — it’s still an annual crop. But now, Americans are eating a lot more shrimp.
About 90 percent of the shrimp we consume is imported, and close to half of the imports are raised in a pond. Our wild-caught shrimp is competing with farm-raised shrimp from the Far East and South America. This makes it a global commodity because shrimp freezes very well and can be shipped almost anywhere.
We have seen a drop in the number of Texas and U.S. shrimp vessels, and work is being done with Freeport captains to develop a trawl system that uses less fuel to catch these tasty morsels.
Eat some shrimp this month or take a child fishing and eat the catch. It’s healthy, and if you eat what you catch, you’ll create some great memories.
Rich Tillman is the Brazoria County marine agent. Contact him at 979-864-1564, or e-mail richt(at)brazoria-county.com.
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