Well, have watched the first few episodes of this show with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I recognize just how hard these guys work to make a living & also understand that there are towns along the Gulf Coast that depend on shrimping for economic survival.

On the other hand, every time I see them pull those nets up packed full of all kinds of fish & other 'bycatch' that ends up dying & going to waste ... well ... I just can't help but think that maybe this is an industry that's outlived itself. Noted quite a number of small dead red snapper in the episodes, can only imagine how many more were not included in selected video clips.

I would move to the coast and set up shop if I was a dentist.

You'd be the loneliest guy in town...

Now you really think those guys want to waste money on a dentist? Talk about throwing good money after bad!

I think I saw Forrest Gumps boat on the last episode.

lol

i keep watching and worrying about the bycatch. can't be good, unless other fish are eating it, which i suspect they might be.

Bill, the bycatch does get eaten - this is why fishing around a shrimpboat is so productive, as it's the biggest chum slick you'll find. The problem is that all those undersized red snapper & everything else is being killed off with nothing to show for it.

it happens, but i'm not gonna whine about it.........

i've got bigger fish to fry

Got a better way to do it? Its not an easy job by any means at all.

I don't think for one minute that its an easy job:

Only better way I can think of is aquaculture, but I can imagine there may be environmental pitfalls to that method as well. The current trawling system is just so wasteful that I can't help thinking that there HAS to be a better way.

LOL...most underrated post of the year!!!

I use to work on my uncles shrimp boat. It was a smaller boat, but still worked the same. He would always push us to cull the shrimp fast to get the fish back in the water. Bigger fish, red snapper and such were thrown back alive as soon as the nets were emptied. There were always plenty of sharks, dolphins and other fish that followed the boats to get their fill of fish. Fish and crabs were thrown back. Sea Bobs and squid packed for bait shops. Shrimp packed for sale. Culling shrimp is a tough job. The only time I have ever been sea sick was the first couple of days looking at that deck.

Hard work for sure, I did it as a young teen ager. There really is no way to catch shrimp that will safely allow anything but shrimp to escape the net, all the extruders in the world wont let everything but the shrimp out. Farm raised shrimp is a great idea but financially, for the most part, undoable for the amount of demand vs supply, at least at present. Aside from that if we completely abandoned wild shrimping it would cause all the fish we love to catch so much to over eat, become over weight and become to lazy to go after a baited hook, causing a population explotion which would inturn ruin the doomsayers theories on the disappearance due to over fishing of the gulf, which would cause them to loose their jobs thus creating another economic hardship to contend with........ big mess all the way around.....
LOL!

i think i'd be holding on to the crabs for bait.

Or for the pot on the stove.......

they looked kinda small, but it seems like it would be an ez way to pick up some cash for the dentist!

Denist? Whats dat?

after watching those guys cull shrimp hours at a time, I think I have a new respect for that style of work. looks tough but I guess it can be rewarding if you get on some "saltwater gold" as they call em

I've been out with guides and locals both who trade beer, cigarettes, etc, for bags of bycatch to use as chum.
Also usually barter for a nice big bag of freshly veined and peeled shrimp to take home!

Nothing goes to waste, something will always eat it.

one episode they brought up a pile of dead bycatch. apparently it was sitting on bottom...nothing ate off it. strange.

peeled and de-veined??!!!........

i call BS!...... at least on the "usually" part

Well now wouldn't this be good for both recreational AND commercial fishermen?

May have used the wrong terminology. Peeled to me means head removed. If they were completely "shelled" then I use the word shelled.
Whatever the terminology...they are the best damn shrimp I have ever eaten. Of course, being on a boat out in the gulf for 12 hours gives me one heck of an appetite.

If I recall correctly the term is "Headed" but its been a great number of years since I worked on a butterfly.

makes sense now........ but i have actually been given some peeled and beheaded shrimp once (and only once) for some beer

the guest on my boat kept bugging me to hit up the shrimper we were near for some shrimp and i new it wasn't gonna be too fruitful for'em but when we got close they held up a small ziplock of maybe 2 gallons........ i said trade your beer if you want, doesn't look like much to me

afterwards i said hand me that sack........ turned out they were already peeled........ i laughed cuz they'd just traded their beer for what the shrimpers had planned for dinner that night

most o'the time their headless, maybe once-r-twice i've got'em with the heads on if i was in a hurry, but alotta times if they didn't have any ready to go they'd say "uno momento" when i offer beer and head'em all for us while we'd troll around waiting

Well, guess some of the concerns of aquaculture are addressed here:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/...the-2424242.php


I suppose it wouldn't be harmful if one farmed shrimp native to ones area.

I couldn't work the boat. I'd be fired for constantly fishing behind the boat after we threw the by-catch overboard.

I worked bait shrimp for more then a year between NPR and Tarpon Springs FL, amazing work most of the time, grueling all of the time.

When the shrimp were thick it was easily 7 days a week and you didn't get but a days rest till your more then salty capt got tired. We'd usually leave dock around 5pm depending on how far we were going, drop the trawls as the sun was dipping into the gulf and then nonstop work till it was time to get off the boat. How ever much time you took to drive to you spot, you'd allow that much time to get back to the dock around 6am. During the drive time back you had to pick/clean your dead shrimp.

I love to fish, I never thought that we were wasteful, as someone stated above, you are putting out a chum line and god only knows what's following the boat. Nothing cooler then taking a pinfish and bouncing it off your board to stun it, so you can see a several hundred lb dolphin be bumped out of the way by an even bigger dolphin all of which is happening feet away from you. The dolphin would come up and smack their tales or blow to let you know they were there, amazing animals.

As for fishing, you really don't have the time if you're working. Bait shrimping only allows 15-30 mins between drags, the faster you sorted through your catch and picked the shrimp. With that being said, I caught my 1st cobia and snook, the snook was back at the dock, cobia was off the boat while out. I'd take small flounder and let them skip behind the boat just in the shadow line from our lights, I never once outta of maybe a dz times, reeled in what ever drilled those flounder, an explosion of water would occur and if you had the time you'd get maybe 5 or so minutes to attempt bringing it in before it was time to bring up the trawls.

Once you brought up your nets, you'd pull you tail bag above your work station release the catch, retie the tail bag, and drop the trawls. If you had a bunch of grass you'd take a steel bar or broom handle, and pivet or work in a figure eight through the box. The box is basically a tank that's roughly 3x3x2 ft. You'd work that stick till the grass was cleared, making each pass slightly deeper then last. Then you'd skim it with a dip net to get out the pinfish that were at the top, it was a grueling step by step procedure, each time you skimmed the box you'd empty the net on a pc if ply that was closed on 3 sides with the fourth side opened to the side of the boat, with another pice of 1/2 ply you'd quickly sort and push the big stuff off the board back into the drink. Once everything for the most part was cleaned out you'd be left with pure shrimp in the bottom of your box, you dip them out onto your board and then pick them. Behind your main work tank, you'd have several clean tanks. This is what they'd refer to as pick'n pennies. You'd dump almost pure shrimp on your board and then grab them up and pitch them into the tanks behind your work tank. You didn't actually grab the shrimp though, you grab three or more at a time in each hand up by running your fingers right about them picking them up by their antennae. Once you got good at it was pretty cool to see a constant arch of shrimp flying through the air.

So if your were working 15-20 minute drags and it took your 10 minutes or more to work your tank you didn't get much rest in between.

The key was to not handle the shrimp too much, for dead shrimp were worthless. Too many dead shrimp in your tanks supposedly would kill the live ones, so you'd have to constantly clean them with out hurting them. They'd die for many different reasons, too much rain all at once, stress, beat up in the process of getting caught and picked but didn't die till they were in the clean tanks.

Absolutely amazing work, pulling out daily going through the channel to the gulf, taking a 1-2 hr commute on the water can't be beat. The crazy stuff you'd see that most will never see outside the Discovery Channel. When people found out you shrimped they'd beg for free shrimp, it was always funny to hear back from them the next day after you gave them 10 lb of uncleaned shrimp.

The pay wasn't good, the owner of the boat took 50%, the capt took 30-40% leaving the help with 10-20%, these were usually 2 man boats. We'd catch on average 10-12k shrimp a night. But what your caught and what you sold was two different things. Some days you'd damn near work for free, some days you'd pull $75-100 a night. When the going was tough there were plenty of days I'd take a dz studs/cobbs down to the power plant after we unloaded and fish the discharge side right at the sun was coming back up for some big gator trout, if I got down to 1/2 dz shrimp I leave and save them for supper when I woke up, most of the time I'd pull a couple trout in 20-30 min, get home and clean them and have fried fish and shrimp when I woke up. It was quite a simplistic lifestyle in them days, things that only made you stronger. If I were still young, given the opportunity I'd do it all again. The stories and memories of those 18 or so months are stuff I can't wait to share with my kids. The crazy chit their dad did when he was young will hopefully inspire them to take a chance here and there.

Sorry for the wall of txt...

i picked chickens out of a barn a coupla times. smelly job w/ 17000 birds to carry out to the trucks. disgusting smell...

I hope they keep on shrimpin for years, nothing better then having a slow day offshore and locating some trawlers on the horizon.

Why do they all sound like they have a fourth grade education?

Because none of them graduated eighth grade!