The Fishery Monitoring Branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center released preliminary shrimp landings data from the Gulf of Mexico for August 2022. In addition, NOAA continued its release of preliminary shrimp landings data from the South Atlantic, a practice begun in March of this year.
As with the agency’s reporting since July of last year, the numbers released by NOAA for landings in the Gulf in August include substantial revisions to the agency’s initial preliminary reporting of shrimp landings in previous years. These revisions reflect changes to past preliminary reporting such that they now reflect the actual, final shrimp landings data ultimately reported by the states. Because the figures reported for the month of August 2022 are preliminary in nature, the Southern Shrimp Alliance has continued to present these data in the historical context of the agency’s past initial reporting of preliminary figures and has not revised these historic charts to reflect the revised figures. This means that in the summary charts prepared by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, the historical figures for the month of August in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 do not correspond to the numbers now being reported by NOAA. Instead, the figures reflect the initial preliminary reporting of NOAA made at the time.
The data released by NOAA did not include any information regarding shrimp landings in Georgia or in South Carolina for the month of August. However, the incomplete data indicates that at least 17.4 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the Gulf of Mexico, and another 1.5 million pounds were landed in the South Atlantic in August.
Over the first eight months of 2022, nearly 68.6 million pounds of shrimp was landed in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest preliminary amount reported for Gulf shrimp landings over that time period since 2013. In addition, at least another 4.8 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the South Atlantic.
The high volumes of reported shrimp landings are traceable, in part, to Alabama, where preliminary figures for 2022, at 10.5 million pounds of shrimp, report the largest amount of shrimp landed in the state in the 21 years for which the Southern Shrimp Alliance has tracked data. Moreover, with preliminary reports of 30.3 million pounds of shrimp landed in Louisiana, that state has seen the largest volume of shrimp preliminarily reported over the first eight months of a year since 2013.
NOAA has revised its reporting of ex-vessel prices, such that the agency no longer reports ex-vessel prices for three different areas of the Gulf of Mexico (Western, Northern, and Eastern). Instead, NOAA now reports a single ex-vessel price for the entirety of Gulf of Mexico and, separately, a single ex-vessel price for the South Atlantic. As the result of the simplification of NOAA’s reporting, the Southern Shrimp Alliance will now track and present prices for all count sizes used by the agency (U15, 15/20, 21/25, 26/30, 31/35, 36/40, and 41/50).
A review of the ex-vessel pricing data for the month of August indicates that in the Gulf of Mexico, ex-vessel prices for all count sizes were reported to have been lower in August 2022 than in August 2021. For four count sizes – U15; 21/25; 26/30; and 31/35 – the ex-vessel prices reported for August were the lowest reported for that shrimp since at least 2018. No ex-vessel prices for any count size in August 2022 were reported for the South Atlantic.
Please click the following link to view the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s compilation and summary of August 2002-2022 shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico, August 2018-2022 shrimp landings in the South Atlantic, and ex-vessel prices for August 2018-2022 in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic: https://www.shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/August-2022-Landings.pdf
