Penaeid Shrimp Harvest in Inshore Mississippi Waters by Out-of-State and Local Fishers

The National Marine Fishing Service’s (NMFS) Electronic Logbook (ELB) program for measuring penaeid shrimp fishing effort in the Gulf of Mexico began in 2004.  One of the benefits of the program is that state-specific information can be obtained from the overall dataset.  A case in point is Mississippi which suffered an 88% reduction in shrimp fishing effort attributable to the deepwater horizon blowout and oil spill.  Even though Mississippi has the smallest coastline of any gulf state (3%), its fleet typically accounts for about 10% of the total offshore annual shrimp landings.  ELB equipped vessels from 8 of the 9 fleet regions in the Gulf have recorded effort in Mississippi territorial seas.  In these waters, vessels from Alabama (60.4% of the total effort), Mississippi (29.8%) and Louisiana and Florida (3.7%) are the largest users. Most return to home ports to land; 91.9% of the landings in Mississippi ports are made by Mississippi vessels.  Mississippi vessels mainly fish in federal waters (73% of the total effort) and land their catch in three primary port regions, Mississippi (41.3%), Mobile, AL (29.6%) and Louisiana (25.1%). The traditional fishing grounds of the Mississippi fleet were the hardest hit by oil spill-related closures of any of the gulf states.