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NOAA Releases Preliminary Warmwater Shrimp Landings Data for April and May 2022

Last week, the Fishery Monitoring Branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center released preliminary shrimp landings data from the Gulf of Mexico for April and May 2022. In addition, NOAA continued its release of preliminary shrimp landings data from the South Atlantic, a practice begun in March 2022.

NOAA reports that 3.0 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic in April and that 13.3 million pounds were landed in May. Last year, NOAA reported that just 9.5 million pounds of shrimp were landed in May of 2021.

As with the agency’s reporting since July of 2021, the numbers released by NOAA for landings in the Gulf in April and May include substantial revisions to the agency’s initial preliminary reporting of shrimp landings in previous years. These revisions reflect changes to past preliminary reporting such that they now reflect the actual, final shrimp landings data ultimately reported by the states. Because the figures reported for the months of April and May of 2022 are preliminary in nature, the Southern Shrimp Alliance has continued to present these data in the historical context of the agency’s past initial reporting of preliminary figures. This means that in the summary charts prepared by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, the historical figures for the months of April and May in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 do not correspond to the numbers now being reported by NOAA. Instead, the figures reflect the initial preliminary reporting of NOAA made at the time.

Comparing the preliminary numbers reported for May to those of past years, total landings in the Gulf, at 12.6 million pounds, were just 2.5 percent below the prior twenty-year historic average (12.9 million pounds). However, landings in the South Atlantic, at 675,000 pounds, were 40.1 percent below the prior four-year historic average for the month of May (1.1 million pounds). Nevertheless, much of the decline in reported volume in shrimp landings in the South Atlantic may be attributed to the lack of availability of data on landings in South Carolina. Over the previous four years, the state averaged over 240,000 pounds of landings in May, with roughly 373,000 pounds of shrimp landed in South Carolina in May of 2021.

Over the first five months of 2022, NOAA reports that 29.2 million pounds of shrimp were landed in the Gulf of Mexico, an amount that is 18.4 percent above the prior twenty-year historic average of 24.6 million pounds. The preliminary reporting shows shrimp landing volumes that are the highest seen since 2017.

The reliability of the preliminary numbers reported by NOAA for the South Atlantic are limited by the lack of data for South Carolina landings, but at 1.5 million pounds, the agency reported 2022 landings to be 55.2 percent below the prior four-year historic average (3.3 million pounds).

In its most recent reporting, NOAA also revised its accounting for ex-vessel prices. The agency no longer will report ex-vessel prices for three different areas of the Gulf of Mexico (Western, Northern, and Eastern) and, instead, will now report a single ex-vessel price for the entirety of Gulf of Mexico and, separately, a single ex-vessel price for the South Atlantic. As the result of the simplification of NOAA’s reporting, the Southern Shrimp Alliance will now track and present prices for all count sizes used by the agency (U15, 15/20, 21/25, 26/30, 31/35, 36/40, and 41/50). Ex-vessel pricing data was not available for the South Atlantic for the month of May, but for the Gulf of Mexico, ex-vessel prices for all count sizes other than 41/50 were reported to have been significantly higher in May 2022 than in May of 2018, 2019, 2020, or 2021.

Please click the following link to view the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s compilation and summary of April 2001/2002-2022 shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico, April 2018-2022 shrimp landings in the South Atlantic, and ex-vessel prices for April 2018-2022 in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic:  https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/April-2022-Landings.pdf

Please click the following link to view the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s compilation and summary of May 2002-2022 shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico, May 2018-2022 shrimp landings in the South Atlantic, and ex-vessel prices for May 2018-2022 in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic:  https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/May-2022-Landings.pdf

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