Tag: Louisiana Sea Grant
Fishermen, processors, distributors, economic developers, and public officials are being invited to Baton Rouge to discuss findings from more than three years of research done in Louisiana’s coastal and inland fisheries at the launch of the Louisiana’s Freshwater Seafood Economic Development Report. The original study, Community Economic Development in Rural Coastal Acadiana Parishes, was conducted in 2018-19, prior to the four hurricanes devastating the state’s seafood industry.
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.
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.
Sitting on the frozen plains of North Dakota 50-miles from the Canadian boarder, Kerian Machines has been enlisted by Gulf fishermen to develop a new method to grade by size head-on shrimp while still on the boat. The new shrimp grader will allow fishermen to better compete with imports, putting the quality consumers demand ahead of price.
Striving to survive years of low prices and a safety scare following the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Louisiana fishing industry suffered an estimated $258 million loss this past year due to the historic flooding according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Commercial fishermen, dock owners and processors and others will have the opportunity to learn about important issues facing this industry at the upcoming Louisiana Fisheries Forward Summit.
This year’s Louisiana Fisheries Forward Summit will be held on Tuesday, March 1st at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner. It will provide fishermen, dock owners, processors and other related businesses an opportunity to network and obtain information on what’s happening in the commercial fishing and seafood industries.
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