2 minute read
Shrimp Season Open - Finally
Eff ective at 8:00 am on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, both South Carolina and Georgia opened state waters to commercial shrimping. Recreational harvest was opened on May 1 in South Carolina and on June 19 in Georgia. Federal waters reopened on June 13.
The season opening comes about a month later than average, after a cold winter killed off the majority of the overwintering white shrimp that normally make up the spring crop.
Advertisement
In January 2018, the Southeast experienced a stretch of abnormally low temperatures. Water temperatures dropped as low as 48 degrees in some coastal areas, an important threshold below which shrimp start to die. For three weeks, water temperatures remained below 48 degrees, killing most of the shrimp spending the winter in coastal waters.
“Cold January temperatures greatly reduced the spring crop, but our monitoring eff orts show that brown shrimp are developing, and the juvenile white shrimp that will make up the fall crop are already beginning to grow in the tidal creeks that serve as their nursery grounds,” said SCDNR assistant marine scientist Dr. Michael Kendrick.
“The white shrimp abundance in our May coast-wide trawl survey is still a concern following the extreme winter freeze,” said Carolyn Belcher, Chief of Marine Fisheries for GADNR. “However, the maturity of the shrimp that we have seen is progressing. Therefore, opening on June 19th allowed for much of the shrimp stock to complete the spawning process. The recommendation to open on June 19 was made after taking into consideration our May survey results and input received from our Shrimp Advisory Panel.”
“The smaller number of white shrimp we have seen recently have been spawning, some more than once,” said Mel Bell, director of SCDNR’s Offi ce of Fisheries Management. “Hopefully we will have a good run of brown shrimp to get us into the summer, and an abundant crop of white shrimp this fall.”
Brown shrimp, fortunately, were not likely impacted by the cold January, although their average size remained a bit smaller than average as of mid-June.
One bright spot this season is that shrimp are prolifi c spawners — a single female can produce millions of eggs. A cold winter, therefore, does not doom the success of the fall white shrimp crop. But harvest may be slow until brown shrimp return in larger numbers to coastal waters.
Top: A commercial shrimp boat trawling near Wassaw Sound. Above: A white shrimp (top) and a brown shrimp (bottom). Photos by Amy Thurman
