There's no question that the weather has been off this year but the problem may be similar to the herring collapse in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill. Following that disaster, the fish were unable to mature and the population crashed in Alaska. A lot more research needs to be done but either way, this year is another terrible year for the professional fishing fleets of the Gulf.
“There’s no shrimp,” explained Grant Bundy, 38. The dock should smell like a place where 10,000 pounds of shrimp a day are bought off the boats. Not this year. In all of September, Bundy’s Seafood bought around 41,000 pounds.
White shrimp season began in late August, and two months in, the shrimpers here say it is a bad one, if not the worst in memory. It is bad not just in spots but all over southeastern Louisiana, said Jules Nunez, 78, calling it the worst season he had seen since he began shrimping in 1950. Some fishermen said their catches were off by 80 percent or more.
