Brownsville shrimping industry struggles against farm-raised imports

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PORT OF BROWNSVILLE — Tooling past one boat after another in the shrimp basin at the Port of Brownsville, Monsignor Heriberto Diaz — arrayed in his vestments aboard the trawler Capt. Sam — sprinkled holy water toward each one, continuing an ancient ritual, albeit this time accompanied by diesel exhaust fumes from the vessel’s stack plus occasional ear-piercing blasts from the air horn.

It was the Texas Shrimp Association’s Blessing of the Fleet on Thursday, the first since the pandemic. It was likewise Monsignor Diaz’s first experience with fleet blessing. The St. Mary’s Catholic School pastor admitted afterward that his elbow was a little sore, from all the sprinkling.

No doubt every crew member, boat captain and fleet owner gathered for the occasion, which began with a dockside prayers under a corrugated metal shed at Zimco Marine, was hoping the prayers and blessing would get some traction, since the Brownsville-Port Isabel shrimp fleet needs all the help it can get.

Chaplain Andreas Lewis of the port’s International Seafarers Center pitched in with his own prayer, asking for the safety of boats and crews, that the market favor Gulf shrimp and shrimpers, and that elected leaders do what it takes to defend the beleaguered domestic shrimping industry against an overwhelming glut of cheap, foreign imports.

The portion of the fleet docked at Port Isabel held its own blessing the same day.

TSA Vice President Carlton Reyes, a Brownsville-Port Isabel shrimper since 1968, who captained his first shrimp boat at 17, started the blessing ceremony with a silent prayer for fleet owner Sammy Snodgrass, Reyes’ longtime friend and beloved veteran of the industry, who died on July 5. The Capt. Sam is one of the boats in the Snodgrass fleet.

“We lost a great pillar of this organization,” Reyes said, his voice trembling. “He was a friend to just about everyone. I don’t know of anyone that would not call Sammy a friend. He’s going to be greatly missed in this port.”

Snodgrass’s passing leaves Reyes part of a quickly dwindling number of veteran fleet owners — he owns six boats, which he offered to sell this reporter on the spot — to keep fighting an increasingly uphill battle just to stay in business. Reyes said the local fleet has shrunk steadily over the years, since peaking at around 500 boats in the mid-1980s, and now stands at around 150 (Port Isabel and Brownsville combined) as more and more owners give up.

The shrinkage has plateaued a bit since there’s no market for shrimp boats right now, he said.

“In the past, if you couldn’t sell them local you could sell them to somebody in Nicaragua or Honduras,” Reyes said. “But now they’re not buying boats either.”

It’s not just one thing making it harder and harder to make a living harvesting Gulf shrimp these days. Manpower shortage is a big one. But the primary culprit is imported shrimp, Reyes said.

“The country is just inundated, swamped — whatever word you want to use there — with farm-raised shrimp from other countries: Ecuador, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, India,” he said.

The pandemic shut down imports for a time, which caused a welcome rise in prices for Gulf shrimp, though that started to turn around by the end of 2021, Reyes said.

“In 2022 and 2023 they imported as much as 1.6 billion pounds a year of farm-raised shrimp,” he said. “That’s a lot of shrimp.”

The United States is so awash in foreign shrimp that supply is outstripping demand and driving down the price — which also drives down the price of domestic shrimp even more, Reyes said.

“Basically what we need to do is put some kind of limit on the amount of shrimp that they can import into the country,” he said.

TSA Executive Director Maria Barrera-Jaross said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspects only 1% of the seafood coming in from other countries, and that TSA is among those pushing the FDA to increase inspections to 50% over a period of maybe five years, which would bring the United States into line with the European Union.

“They inspect up to 50%, and if it’s showed to be tainted or contaminated, they destroy it on site,” she said.

TSA has formed alliances with domestic shrimping associations in all the Gulf shrimp-producing states and Atlantic coast states to North Carolina, Barrera-Jaross said. Together, they’re also taking aim at the practice of “port shopping,” in which boats loaded with foreign shrimp will stop at one port and then another until they’re allowed in and their cargoes are unloaded and swept into the marketplace.

“We want to put a stop to that practice,” Barrera-Jaross said.

TSA President Chris Londrie will be in Austin on Tuesday to testify before a House committee about how unchecked imports are hurting Gulf shrimpers, she said.

“They’re going to look at the impact on foreign imports on the Texas shrimp industry and try to look for ways to find solutions, so we’re very excited about that,” Barrera-Jaross said.

TSA has also met with Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who voiced support for the industry and acknowledged the challenges facing it during a recent meeting of the Southern Association of State Departments of Agriculture, she said, adding that a working group to tackle the issues was proposed.

Barrera-Jaross said the U.S. International Trade Commission conceded 20 years ago that foreign countries where dumping farm-raised shrimp in this country, though despite tariffs levied over the years domestic shrimpers are still fighting the same battle. In the mid-1990s domestic shrimpers had 50% of the U.S. market, and today it’s plummeted to 4%, she noted.

Since the fishing industry is under the purview of the Commerce Department rather than the Department of Agriculture, programs to help U.S. shrimpers are relatively few, Barrera-Jaross said.

“There are some legislative measures to try to bring elements of the fishing industry to USDA, but we’re inching our way in that direction,” she said.

Barrera-Jaross, who became TSA executive director about a year ago, said she’s fired up about pushing for change and that “a lot of things are happening right now.”

“We’re working hard,” she said. “This is such a beautiful legacy. This is American made. This is 100% family owned businesses that have had this way of life for so many years. They’re struggling to keep that legacy going.”