PORT SULPHUR, La. — When Acy Cooper launched his 31-foot trawler, the Lacy Kay, in 1983, it was named to honor both his newborn daughter and his wife. For more than four decades the boat was the centerpiece of a three-vessel family fleet that hauled thousands of pounds of Gulf shrimp. This year the Lacy Kay sits tied to a dock in Venice, Louisiana, while Cooper takes a hired job ferrying oil-rig workers to make ends meet.
Cooper has been shrimping since he was 15. Now, after a sharp jump in fuel costs and weak shrimp prices, he’s one of many Gulf fishermen facing an economy that no longer supports full-time work on the water. “I’m making money,” he said of the temporary gig, “not what I would be making, but you take what you can get.”
Diesel prices climbed from roughly $3.50 a gallon to more than $5 by spring, driven in part by the war with Iran and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. For vessels that already operate on thin margins, that rise is more than an inconvenience — it threatens their livelihoods. Large offshore freezer boats can burn 9,000 to 12,000 gallons of diesel on a single 30-day trip; one operator told industry leaders he spent $47,000 on fuel before leaving port this season, about $20,000 more than the prior year.
The sudden fuel shock compounds long-term pressures on U.S. shrimpers. Decades of imported, mostly farm-raised shrimp — from places such as India and Ecuador — have flooded American markets. By 2023 imports accounted for more than 90 percent of U.S. shrimp consumption. The Gulf fleet’s share of the domestic market has dropped from nearly 30 percent in 1984 to about 4.5 percent in 2023. Adjusted for inflation, dockside prices have fallen from more than $6 per pound forty years ago to under $2 in 2023, and Gulf shrimp revenue plunged from $489 million in 2021 to $221 million in 2023.
Those economics have thinned the ranks of commercial shrimpers. Louisiana once had nearly 20,000 shrimpers in the mid-1980s; today fewer than 1,400 remain.
Even where shrimp are present, catching enough to break even is getting harder. Cooper says he now needs to haul roughly 1,000 pounds per trip to cover costs. This season, a cold front pushed many shrimp into open water and not back into marshes; decades of coastal erosion have stripped much of the marshland that once sheltered young shrimp, pushing them farther offshore and making them harder to catch.
Blake Price, director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, which represents commercial shrimpers from North Carolina to Texas, says the industry was already weakened before the recent fuel spike. “This industry could absorb an increased fuel cost a lot better if our markets were strong and hadn’t been flooded with foreign, farm-raised product,” he said.
There were brief signs of improvement last year after tariffs on imported shrimp under the previous administration nudged dockside prices up and encouraged some fishermen to invest in their boats. But those tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court, and then fuel prices surged.
Shrimpers and industry groups are pressing Washington for help. One piece of legislation, the Save Our Shrimpers Act, would prohibit U.S. taxpayer dollars from subsidizing foreign shrimp aquaculture operations that compete directly with American fishermen. That bill passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also recently created a new Office of Seafood, which advocates hope will extend assistance programs long available to land-based farmers to the fishing sector.
“We’re not asking for checks or a payout,” Price said. “We just want a level playing field.”
At the marina in Port Sulphur, Cooper says his message to federal lawmakers is simple: help with fuel costs or give fishermen a safety net when crises hit. Tossing chicken bones into the water before heading back to the boat, he said, “Help us with these fuel prices. We’re farmers of the sea. We want something to fall back on when something like this happens, so we can be taken care of also.”
Until the economics change, many traditional shrimp boats — including the Lacy Kay — will remain idle, waiting for conditions to improve or for policy changes that might give Gulf shrimpers a fighting chance.