Tag Archives: Florida shrimpers
Still reeling from Ian, Florida shrimpers are desperate to get back on the water
Jimmy Driggers, 85, got into the fishing business when he was just 13 years old. He’s a shrimper in Fort Myers, Fla. “I was a mullet fisherman, [a] commercial fisherman in my younger days,” he said. Driggers walks with a prosthetic leg from an injury he sustained on his boat about a decade ago. It’s decorated with a sea lighthouse. He owns one shrimping boat the F/V Miz Shirley named after his wife. It can carry 50,000 pounds of shrimp. Driggers said the industry has been hurting for decades, and that he was paid more back in the 1980’s than he is today. Fuel prices have skyrocketed. Then came Hurricane Ian. It pushed The Miz Shirley half onto a seawall and half was left in the water –- unusable. >click to read< 07:28
Florida shrimpers race to get battered fleet back to sea
The seafood industry in southwest Florida is racing against time and the elements to save what’s left of a major shrimping fleet and a lifestyle that was battered by Hurricane Ian. One of two shrimpers that didn’t sink or get tossed onto land went out Sunday, but the victory was small compared with the task ahead. Shrimping is the largest piece of Florida’s seafood industry, with a value of almost $52 million in 2016, state statistics show. Gulf of Mexico shrimp from Fort Myers has been shipped all over the United States for generations. Now, it’s a matter of when the fishing can resume and whether there will still be experienced crews to operate the boats when that happens. 20 photos, >click to read< 08:49
Shrimpers in Florida losing millions after Hurricane Ian
Jesse Clapham, of Erickson and Jensen Seafood, said his company brings in $10 million a year from shrimping. Ian is a major setback to an industry already playing catch-up, he says. “You know we’ve been through multiple hurricanes in the past, fuel prices, imported shrimp, and we keep going,” Clapham said. When the storm first hit, many shrimpers took refuge on their boats. Bloomberg reports that because diesel prices rose so much this year, the boats couldn’t afford to go to Texas in April, as they usually do, where shrimp are more plentiful. When they stayed in Florida, it put some of them directly in Hurricane Ian’s path. “We need help from the government or the state of Florida,” Clapham said. Video, >click to read< 09:25
