SC shrimpers back economic contingency plan as prices fall | News

A NOAA report from the agency’s Fishery Monitoring Branch found that more than 119 million pounds of warm-water shrimp were imported into the United States in 2022.

Foreign, frozen shrimp sell for much less than wild-caught native shrimp, and for local shrimpers and fishmongers like Galimitz, the price is hard to beat. Those cost savings are what hurt the higher-end locals.

“No one wants to buy it because it costs $2 a pound,” he said of a catch from South Carolina. “Tastes 10 times better, no preservatives, no chemicals, it’s caught in the USA. But no one wants it because they’re going to save $1.50 or $2 a pound,” Galimitz said.

Declaring a disaster

Bryan Jones is a first-generation shrimper in McClellanville.

Before his life focused on nets, saltwater and fresh catch, he was vice president of an asset management firm in Florida.

The work is exhausting and the days on the deck of his trawler, the Pamela Sue, are long, Jones said. There are risks associated with shrimp fishing – financial, environmental, physical – but he saw an opportunity to provide a livelihood for his family and couldn’t resist.

He joins at a time when fishermen are struggling and more and more fishermen are deciding to leave the trade altogether.

“I think the average age of a shrimp boat captain is 65,” Jones said. “What we need is an injection of young people into the sector to sustain it.”

The shrimper is the vice president of the South Carolina Shrimper’s Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the shrimp industry in the Palmetto State.

The SC Shrimper’s Association, along with the Southern Shrimp Alliance and other activist groups, has called on local, state and federal leaders to declare an economic disaster due to the effects of shrimp dumping.

A bipartisan bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, co-sponsored by a handful of representatives from the country’s coastal communities, including Lowcountry Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, would create a new avenue to declare a fishing disaster.