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 and the South Atlantic for November 2022.
As with the agency’s reporting since July of last year, the numbers released by NOAA include substantial revisions, with reporting for the years prior to 2022 reflecting final totals tabulated by the agency. Because NOAA’s reporting for November 2022 remains preliminary in nature, the Southern Shrimp Alliance presents this data in the historical context of the agency’s previously reported preliminary figures. This means that in the summary charts prepared by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, the historical figures for the month of November in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 do not correspond to the numbers now being reported by NOAA.
The preliminary data indicates that over 9.0 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the Gulf and South Atlantic in November 2022. Through November of last year, a total of 108.7 million pounds of warmwater shrimp have been reported as landed in the United States, down from 116.4 million pounds over the first eleven months of 2021, a decline of 6.6 percent. Notably, however, 2022 volume figures do not include any reporting of landings of shrimp in South Carolina for the year or from North Carolina for the month of November.
The data released by NOAA shows that while shrimp landings in Texas significantly declined in 2022 (and were well below totals reported over the prior four years), Louisiana had a bounce-back year with 47.5 million pounds of shrimp landed last year. Louisiana’s shrimp landings over the first eleven months were over 28.3 percent higher than the final landings totals reported by NOAA for the same time period in 2020. Last year, Louisiana accounted for 43.7 percent of the total volume of warmwater shrimp landed in the entire United States. In 2020, Louisiana had accounted for just 34.3 percent of total warmwater shrimp landings in the country.
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 now tracks and summarizes 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 from NOAA indicates that in the Gulf of Mexico, ex-vessel prices for all count sizes, with the exception of 36/40 count, were reported to have been lower in November 2022 than in November 2021. Similarly, all ex-vessel prices reported for the South Atlantic in November 2022 were significantly below those reported in November 2021.
Click the following link to view the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s compilation and summary of November 2002-2022 shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico, November 2018-2022 shrimp landings in the South Atlantic, and ex-vessel prices in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic for November 2018-2022: https://www.shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/November-2022-Landings.pdf
