January 31, 2020 — Oregon pink shrimp trawlers wound up with a harvest of 26.85 million pounds for their 2019 season. Those are the preliminary numbers from PacFIN, and at ex-vessel prices of 74 cents per pound, fleet revenues crunch out to $19.94 million.
As predicted, the 2019 season came in with lower production than the 2018 season, in which the fleet of 64 trawlers put in its third best season on record with 35.8 million pounds and ex-vessel revenues of $26.9 million. Ex-vessel prices averaged 68 cents per pound in 2018.
The mix of age 1 and age 2 shrimp dovetailed in the 2018 fishery and drove the number of harvestable shrimp upward. Biomass modeling had predicted a strong showing of age ones, and they came through.
This year, it was a strong representation of 2-year-olds that drove the fishery, according to Scott Groth, the pink shrimp and south coast shellfish project leader with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, in Charleston.