Tag Archives: Jesse Clapham
One Year after Ian: Shrimping Industry
Grant Erickson’s family spent 70 years building their shrimping business on San Carlos Island. Hurricane Ian destroyed it in about 12 hours. “Devastating. We’ve never been damaged so bad,” he recalled. “You come back to that, and you’re stunned. You’re in shock. You don’t even know where to start. It’s too much all at once.” It’s just hard to put in words the last year,” Jesse Clapham, the fleet manager for Erickson and Jensen Seafood. “We had a meeting, and everybody said, ‘Do we want to give up and go home, or do we want to put it back together?’ And everybody unanimously said, ‘Put it back together,’” he recalled. But doing so would be a Herculean challenge. Photo, Video, >>click to read<< 10:57
Fishing industry in Lee County ‘wiped out’ by Hurricane Ian
Among the wreckage, a small lime-green building, the Island Seafood Market, is somehow still standing. Owner Casey Streeter has had to tear out everything that was once inside. But the biggest hit was to what’s behind the shop. Streeter said all of their grouper boats were damaged by Ian, and even worse, they lost their docks and ice house to the hurricane. “I couldn’t believe it,” Jesse Clapham recalled seeing the damage for the first time. “It blew my mind.” Clapham is the fleet manager at Erickson and Jensen Seafood company. He’s worked on shrimp boats for 35 years and he’s dealt with hurricanes before – but nothing like this. Video, >click to read< 10:21
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
They rode out Hurricane Ian on shrimp boats. Now they fear their livelihood is destroyed
By the time these shrimpers knew Hurricane Ian was headed to Fort Myers Beach, it was too late to leave. Shrimp Boat Lane is a crook in the middle of San Carlos Island. Inside pulses the heart of a storied fishery. But with little warning and punishing winds, Hurricane Ian shredded it. Jesse Clapham walked through what was left Friday morning, sweat soaking the back of his black T-shirt. “My dad was a fisherman. His was a fisherman,” said Clapham, fleet manager for Erickson and Jensen, a seafood and marine supplies company. Just three of the company’s 12 boats are still in the water, he said, and one has a hole in the side. Normally, Clapham said, the fleet would be in Texas around this time, but gas was too expensive to make the run this year. Photos, >click to read< 13:04
