re: Shrimping Costs questions

A friend of mine runs 15 shrimp boats and just put 10 of them up for sale last month. The price of shrimp has fallen so far that very few people actually went out and shrimped offshore in the Gulf this year. The price point barrier for 98% of the offshore fleet is $3.45 a gallon. The cost for filling up your typical offshore shrimp boat with diesel ($4.40 to $5.50) is around $60-$90k right now which means they are hemorrhaging money when they go offshore.

The US is on track to double the number of imported Shrimp this year to 2.5 BILLION pounds which is a BILLION more than the US consumes every year. The shrimp processors also no longer have any capacity to buy Gulf shrimp because their freezers are full from the imported shrimp and don't want to buy Gulf shrimp because its more expensive for them to hold than the imported shrimp from China, India, Peru, and other countries.

The local processors are also being squeezed by their financial institutions who have significantly reduced their credit lines because of all the excess imported shrimp they have sitting in their freezers.

2.5 billion pounds of imported shrimp versus 100 million pounds of Gulf shrimp caught in the entire gulf of Mexico has caused the shrimp prices to collapse.

The Gulf shrimping industry probably won't survive in the next 36 months according to my neighbor. It is so bad he has cut the price in half for his shrimp boats but he is lucky that all of his big boats are paid in full.