Council OK's Contentious Shrimp Boat Plan
Thursday May 12, 2:42 am ET
Council Votes to Cap Number of Shrimp Boats Fishing in Federal Waters
BILOXI, Miss. (AP) -- In one of the biggest changes to the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fleet in years, the council overseeing the fishery voted to cap the number of commercial shrimp boats in federal waters.
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The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council voted 9-8 in favor of the contentious proposal at its monthly meeting in Biloxi on Wednesday night.
The council decided that only fishermen who had obtained federal licenses by Dec. 6, 2003, would be eligible to get licenses under the cap.
The cap would apply only to federal waters and the majority of shrimpers stay close to shore in state waters. There are about 2,800 shrimpers with federal licenses and about 14,000 with state licenses around the Gulf.
The measure, which calls for a 10-year moratorium, still requires approval by the National Marine Fisheries Service before taking effect.
"This is another step to try to control overfishing and to better manage the resource," said Marianne Cufone, a fish consultant for the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network.
Some fishermen opposed a moratorium, saying that many of them would be unfairly cut out of the fishery and that there was no need to reduce the fleet because the shrimp stock remains abundant.
Supporters of a cap say that reducing the number of boats is needed to make shrimping profitable. The industry has been struggling since 2001 as a surge of pond-raised imports have undercut the value of the domestic harvest by as much as half.
Capping the number of boats would be one of the biggest changes in the industry since at least 1998 when the fleet was required to reduce the amount of bycatch shrimp trawls brought in.
Bycatch is the assortment of marine life scooped up in nets along with shrimp that often dies or is killed when it is removed from the water. Conservationists accuse shrimpers of killing vast amounts of marine life in their nets and endangering the survival of other ocean stocks.
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