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The National Seafood Council Task Force has released a report highlighting pathways to funding for a National Seafood Marketing Campaign and governing structure considerations for the National Seafood Council.
Approximately $50 million in grants to support seafood processors, processing facilities and processing vessels through the Seafood Processors Pandemic Response and Safety Block Grant Program (SPRS) will come from the The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This funding is linked to COVID and the pandemic’s impact on the fishing industry.Louisiana Seafood Processors are slated to receive $4.2 million of the available funds.
LSU Sea Grant, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and members of the Louisiana Fishing Community Recovery Coalition have crafted a five-page “white paper” on the extreme damage and loss of revenue to the Louisiana seafood industry as a result of four hurricanes during the years of 2020-21. All five sectors of the industry have suffered; commercial fishermen, recreation fishing, docks, processors and marinas.
Needs Assessment for the 2020 and 2021 Hurricanes. White Paper: Louisiana Fishing Community Recovery Coalition.
A recently released report detailing infrastructure, revenue and resource loss to Louisiana Fisheries have prompted a Louisiana Congressmen to ask the Department of Commerce (DOC) to expedite a Fishery Disaster Determination due to major damage related to impacts of Hurricanes Laura, Delta, Zeta and especially Ida.
The plight of the Louisiana fishermen from the four hurricanes over the past two years is starting to get national attention. A February 1st article in the New York Times deals with the plight of the industry since Hurricane Ida, and the effect it is having on the region’s rich culture of food and fishing.
Four hurricanes over the course of two-years has cost the Louisiana seafood industry almost a $580 million dollar loss to infrastructure, revenue and resources. A recently released report by Louisiana Sea Grant and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries documents extreme damage and loss of revenue over all five sectors of the industry; commercial fishermen, recreational fishing, docks, processors and marinas.
Life has been like a bowl of gumbo for James Carville, Louisiana’s most famous political consultant. For 77-years he has stirred the hot pot, not always sure of success. But when it comes to making real gumbo, with real seafood, there’s only one he accepts, Louisiana Gulf seafood.
2020-2021 Hurricane report – FINAL 01.13.22 Appendix A – 2020-2021 Louisiana Hurricane Damage Survey Appendix B – Survey Comments – FINAL APPENDIX C – Hurricane Ida Fish Kill Inland Report
The Twin Parish Port District has received a two million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for infrastructure at the Port of Delcambre. The MARAD Port Infrastructure Development Program grant will fund dock restoration on two aging structures, as well as the construction of a new industrial fabrication facility.
On August 29, 2021 Hurricane Ida blasted ashore along the Louisiana coast almost complete destroying everything in its path. Infrastructure was hard hit, especially infrastructure vital to Louisiana’s $2.4 billion seafood industry. Four months later little has changed, and the state’s fishermen, docks, processors, fish houses and restaurants are wondering if it will ever return.
Louisiana Sea Grant and LSU AgCenter have partnered with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to compile an economic assessment of fisheries infrastructure damage from hurricanes that have devastated one of the State’s largest industries during the past two years.
For every hurricane during the past 40-years Preston Dore has rode out the storms at the Delcambre docks on his shrimp boat. After Katrina, Gustav, Isaac and a host of others, both he and the boat have walked away mostly unscathed. Hurricane Ida was different. The storm has cost him his boat, his livelihood and has stripped away his dignity as a provider for his family.
For almost two hours Louisiana’s seafood leaders from all sectors of the industry gathered via zoom, mobile phones at restaurants or in cars, and in a conference room in Baton Rouge to discuss the damage of Hurricane Ida’s wrath on the State’s seafood industry. The consensus; the hurricane laid a path of destruction that has crippled almost every sector.
Hurricane Ida struck the heart of Louisiana’s seafood industry as a Category 4 hurricane, wiping out homes, boats, trucks, plants and icehouses. Oyster farmers on Grand Isle lost their entire crop, processing plants from Grand Isle to Dulac lay in ruin and almost 30% of the shrimping fleet in Golden Meadow lay useless at the start of current shrimp season. “If the Louisiana seafood industry is to have any life at all in the near future,” said Gulf Seafood Foundation board member Ewell Smith, “it is all about ice.”
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