South Carolina Department of Natural Resources has opened shrimping season for special provisional trawl areas within state waters on 25 May. The was done to allow the state’s commercial trawler fleet to begin limited harvesting of some this year’s white shrimp that had already moved into these offshore waters.
The authority took this decision to open shrimp trawl season after biologists with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources (DNR) sample state waters and determine that an adequate number of roe shrimp have spawned. The opening of the season is delayed by two weeks in comparison to the previous four year’s due to concerns over loss of a significant portion of the state’s overwintering white shrimp caused by unusually cold inshore water temperatures experienced in mid-January.
Mel Bell, DNR’s Director of Office of Fisheries Management is of view that sampling this winter and spring by Marine Resources Division personnel revealed lower than average numbers of shrimp inside our estuaries, reinforcing the need for a later opening of the season. He added that the recent sampling of near shore waters from Georgetown to Hilton Head yielded some encouraging signs that a good number of white shrimp had begun spawning by mid-May and would continue to spawn this week.
