Latest Shrimp fishery Stories

The Asian Tiger Prawn, an invasive species in the Gulf of Mexico that can grow nearly a foot long and threatens native wild stocks, has been found on the Texas coast. The tiger prawns, native to the western Pacific, have been spreading along the Gulf Coast since 2006 and their numbers have increased this year. Shrimpers pulled the first one from Texas waters in June. So far shrimpers harvested three in Aransas Bay, one from Sabine Lake at the Louisiana Border and one from open waters about...

  Some 4,600 sea turtles are accidentally caught and killed in U.S. fisheries every year, a 94 percent reduction since 1990, according to a new study published this month in the journal Biological Conservation. However, the progress may not be enough to sustain turtle populations, according to researchers at Duke University's Project Global and Conservation International, who conducted the study. The use of turtle-excluder devices (TEDs), or large holes that allow the sea turtles to...

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday closed a section of the Gulf of Mexico to shrimping near the area where the massive oil spill earlier this year stemmed from as a precautionary move after a commercial fisherman found balls of tar in his shrimping net. NOAA said the closed area is about 4,200 square miles of Gulf federal waters off Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and affects royal red shrimping. The move was taken after a "commercial shrimper,...

The number of sea turtles inadvertently snared by commercial fishing gear over the past 20 years may reach into the millions, according to the first peer-reviewed study to compile sea turtle bycatch data from gillnet, trawl and longline fisheries worldwide.The study, which was published online April 6 in the journal Conservation Letters, analyzed data compiled from peer-reviewed papers, government reports, technical reports, and symposia proceedings published between 1990 and 2008. All data...

Mexico's certification to export shrimp to the United States has been suspended because its trawls lack required protections for endangered sea turtles, the State Department said on Thursday. The ban on shrimp exports will come into effect beginning April 20, 2010, when the shrimping season ends. More than half of all Mexican shrimp is exported to the United States. The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service determined that Mexico's turtle excluder devices were no longer up to code with U.S....

In an effort to protect rare sea turtles from being caught and killed in fishing nets, fishery managers have looked to a Cape Cod company to build a device they think can help save the turtles without interfering with fishing profits. The device is called a "tow-time logger", which is a 7-inch silver cylinder attached to fishing nets to record how long the net is submerged in the water.That amount of time is absolutely critical if a turtle is captured in the net and dragged behind...

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla., March 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A report released this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) includes a formal acknowledgement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other enforcement agencies that companies willing to illegally mislabel shrimp products to avoid paying antidumping duties are also evading U.S. food safety efforts. The Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA), which repeatedly has voiced concern over the unaddressed problem of...

Shrimp, a vital foundation of income for many developing countries, are becoming more susceptible to overfishing, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced on Tuesday.Overfishing of shrimp can then corrupt ecologically significant seagrass beds and coastal regions, the UN agency wrote in the report, "The Global Study of Shrimp Fisheries."Shrimp is one of the most principal kinds of fishery product for many countries, creating total revenues of 10 billion dollars or 16...

Invasive Australian jellyfish could pose a threat to the U.S. commercial fishing and shrimping industry. The exotic jellyfish, Phyllorhiza punctata, were first spotted in the Gulf of Mexico in 2000. They've moved east since then and are now being reported in waters from southwestern Louisiana to Morehead City, N.C. Researchers said the jellyfish present little to no danger to humans in terms of their sting, but they could hurt fishermen and shrimpers by fouling trawling nets and eating eggs...

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLO -- Fishing nets with "exit holes" being introduced under a project to salvage depleted world fisheries are helping shrimp trawlers reduce unwanted extra catches by up to 70 percent, a U.N. study showed on Sunday.Catching shrimp, the world's most traded marine commodity worth almost $12 billion a year, is hugely wasteful because the fine-mesh nets also scoop up everything from tiny fish to sharks and turtles, which usually end up...