Shrimp landings in North America – specifically the Gulf of Mexico and some US states – have declined from volumes recorded in September last year; for the Gulf of Mexico, landings bottomed at about 24% below a 14-year historical average.

September's shrimp landings from the Gulf of Mexico continue to show low volumes of catch in 2016, data recently released by US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed.

The 11.2 million pounds of shrimp landed in the Gulf of Mexico last month were the lowest reported for the month of September since 2008 and the third-lowest volume recorded for a September over the last 15 years. 

 

 

Overall, shrimp landings in the Gulf were nearly 18% below the prior 14-year historical average (13.6 million pounds), with an almost 3.5-million-pound drop-off from last September (14.6 million pounds). For those in US states, landings in Louisiana (five million pounds) were on par with landings last September (4.9 million pounds) and the decline in volume was experienced most acutely in Texas (4.3 million pounds versus 6.1 million pounds in September 2015) and Alabama (1.2 million pounds versus 2.8 million pounds in September 2015).

In the nine months through September, 67.3 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the Gulf of Mexico, the lowest for the first three quarters of the year since 2010. 

In total, Gulf shrimp landings this year remain roughly 24% below the prior 14-year historical average (88.4 million pounds), with a drop-off of 7.5 million pounds compared with the first nine months of last year (74.8 million pounds).