Abstract

The federally-permitted penaeid shrimp fishery of the Gulf of Mexico is one of the United States’s most valuable fisheries. Despite decades of gear modifications aimed at reducing bycatch, such as Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) and Bycatch Reduction Devices (BRDs), the bycatch associated with shrimp trawls presents a serious challenge for meeting requirements for certification as a sustainable fishery. Without such certification, the shrimp industry is likely to lose market share to international competitors and may have difficulty selling their product to major seafood buyers (Walmart, Kroger, etc.). Two barriers for certification of the federal otter trawl fleet remain: low observer coverage and the "modified characterization protocol” of bycatch, whereby a large percent of bycatch outside a few species of interest remains unidentified and lumped into broad categories of “fish”, “crustaceans”, and “invertebrates”. The goal of this project was to provide an updated database of catch rates (kg/hr) of Gulf of Mexico otter trawl shrimp bycatch with full taxonomic resolution for the species that NOAA does not record. We partnered with shrimp industry members and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) collaborators to (1) collect and fully characterize a representative subsample of bycatch obtained on trips observed by the NMFS observer sampling program for the year 2021 and (2) quantify changes in bycatch composition and catch rates between current (2021) and historical (1992-1994) periods, when complete characterization of bycatch species were last available.

PDF Preview