Tag Archives: Texas shrimp industry

Texas Shrimp Industry Lacks Willing U.S. Workers

It’s two weeks in the Shrimp Season and Texas shrimpers are dealing with another worker shortage. Last year about 20% of the Texas Shrimp fleet stayed in Port from a lack of workers. Andrea Hance is Executive Director of the Texas Shrimp Association based in Brownsville. She told The Texas Standard that about 8 to 10 percent of the state’s shrimp boats are still tied up at docks.  “And those boat owners or captains what happened to them is they don’t have enough people to even man the boat, um, so they may only have one other person, well, the boat needs at least three to go out and efficiently operate.” >click to read<11:48

Shorthanded – Shrimp industry fears worker shortage

The Texas shrimp industry is celebrating a handful of recent legislative wins while also dreading next year’s shrimp season if changes aren’t made to the seasonal foreign worker visa program.
The Brownsville-Port Isabel shrimp fleet starts this season, which opens today, without enough workers. Andrea Hance, executive director of the Texas Shrimp Association, estimates that 70 percent of the fleet’s 140 trawlers will head out to the Gulf shorthanded. >click to read<10:51

Brownsville: Shrimp season starts with shrimp boats lacking workers

The Texas shrimp industry faces an especially daunting challenge this year, a reality echoed in the fierceness of Father Mark Watters’ blessing-of-the-fleet sermon Monday at the Brownsville Shrimp Basin. It was Watters’ 12th year blessing the Brownsville-Port Isabel shrimp fleet, though it’s doubtful he has ever raised the roof like he did Monday with a 25-minute pep talk that started quietly before building to a shouting crescendo, Watters promising the few dozen assembled that “Jesus is in the mountain-moving business.” He didn’t mince words when citing the difficulties the fleet faces this year, namely, a dire shortage of workers from Mexico. The industry is fighting a misperception that it would rather hire Mexican H-2B visa workers than U.S. workers because they’re cheaper, Hance said, though the truth is that finding Americans to crew shrimp boats is practically impossible despite the industry’s best efforts. click here to read the story 12:58

Shrimper shortage: Lack of foreign workers puts Texas shrimp industry in bind

The Texas shrimp industry, struggling for years against high fuel prices and cheap foreign imports, faces a new crisis: a major shortage of the temporary foreign workers that boat owners and processing plants depend on to operate. The shortage is the result of Congress not renewing the H-2B Returning Worker Program when it expired at the end of September. Congress created the exemption in 2015 to help industries like seafood, landscaping and hospitality fill essential jobs.The exemption was established after the government in 2005 instituted an annual cap of 66,000 H-2B foreign worker visas, in response to a surge in H-2B applications from employers since the program started during the late 1980s. The cap is divided equally among the two halves of the fiscal year — 33,000 the first half and 33,000 the last. As part of the H-2B application process, the government requires employers first to advertise the jobs to U.S. workers. In the case of the shrimp industry, however, it’s very difficult to find U.S. workers willing to do the work. The Rio Grande Valley’s shrimp industry increasingly has had to rely on shrimp boat workers from Mexico, who tend to have experience and in some cases have worked on the same U.S. boats for two decades or more. continue reading the story here 15:12

Texas shrimp industry battles hostile trends as season closes for two months

573bc9bc4db0a.imageThe Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Coastal Fisheries Division decided May 15 was a good time to close the state’s shrimp season because, according to its sampling, the average size and number of brown shrimp in Texas coastal waters is higher than the 20-year average. Texas closes its waters to shrimping from the coast to nine nautical miles out for roughly two months each year to give little shrimp time to grow before being harvested. The National Marine Fisheries Service typically imposes a closure out to 200 nautical miles at the same time. More, bigger shrimp is potentially good news for the state’s struggling shrimp industry, since big shrimp fetch higher prices, according to Andrea Hance, shrimp fleet owner and executive director of the Texas Shrimp Association. Read the rest here 19:27