As per a federal study about 55 fishermen have died in the past decade in pursuit of these southern crustaceans. It means those fishermen’s deaths rank first in the nation’s seafood harvests. That’s compared with a death toll of 12 Bering Sea crabbers during the same time period.
Buddy Guindon, a veteran Texas shrimper, said that the shrimp fishery has evolved into a grueling derby where hundreds of vessels – large and small – compete for shares of the catch, and where crews sometimes work well past the point of exhaustion. He told that crew members sometime lose their balance and pitch overboard in storms or they might get tangled in gear and dragged overboard, their absence unnoticed by other crew members until much later.
It is true that over the past decade such deaths accounted for more than half of the fatalities in the Gulf of Mexico shrimp harvest. To compile the harvest fatalities, the authors, Alaska-based federal epidemiologist Jennifer Lincoln and her colleague Devin Lucas, reviewed Coast Guard reports that detailed 504 fishing-industry deaths from 2000 through 2009.
Guindon says the Gulf shrimp’s derby-style harvest is “a nightmare,” and he would like to see a shift to a quota system. Media report states that a new shrimp season that opened last week off Texas is expected to attract more than 500 vessels. Many of these crews have been shut out of oil-fouled harvests elsewhere in the Gulf and are eager for an opportunity to fish.
