Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy

Murry Kimball never wanted to be a shrimper. The 64-year-old spent much of his childhood learning the ways of the ten-legged crustacean; anytime school wasn’t in session, he and his younger brother would be dragged out to work on their father’s boat in the Gulf waters of southeast Texas. “I stayed seasick,” Kimball remembers. “I hated shrimping so much, I wanted to become a game warden and shut my daddy down.” Instead, after high school Kimball went to work in Port Arthur’s shipyards and refineries and stayed there, until declining health forced him to retire seven years ago. Now he plies the trade he once rejected, because it’s the only other job he knows. Most days, he gets up at sunrise to cruise the inland shores of Port Arthur on a 59-foot trawler named the Nevada Gayle. 

She launches on a recent September morning, leaving weather-worn pilings in a narrow slip on the Neches River. Her white paint is peeling, her bulwarks leaking slightly. Captain Kimball is at the helm, perched on a repurposed bucket seat from an old car with stuffing spilling from its ripped red cloth. His fingers push the throttle up; the boat’s engine drowns out the ambience of squawking seagulls and radio chatter. 

The Nevada Gayle picks up speed, aiming for an opening just ahead, where the slender waterway meets the main Neches River channel and flows east. She’s clear to enter deeper water—until she plows into a submerged sandbar. The boat pitches forward and slides to a stop. Kimball mutters something under his breath, perhaps encouraging the Nevada Gayle, or maybe cursing her. 

This stretch of water, located a bit north of Port Arthur, once teemed with small shrimping vessels. But many of the docks are now warped and curled up almost like half-pipes. Hardly anyone travels this way anymore, and in the boats’ absence the channel has been filled with shifting sand. 

For various reasons, this waterway hasn’t been dredged in years. “I’m losing a lot of money from not being able to get in and out,” Kimball says. “I don’t know what to do, who to talk to, how to get somebody to help us.” 

Kimball isn’t alone in feeling helpless. The shrimping industry in Texas is experiencing a decline two decades in the making. In 2000, Texas counted more than 2,500 licensed commercial shrimpers along its Gulf Coast. Today, there are fewer than 1,000. The reasons are many—and go well beyond stubborn sandbars. Last year the average price of marine diesel, nationally, was $4.21 a gallon, almost twice as expensive as three years ago. Hurricanes have increased in size and severity, too, further complicating shrimping season. But the biggest problem is the surfeit of imported shrimp that has driven down domestic prices. The value of shrimp sold by fishermen in Texas has decreased from $224 million in 2014 to $84 million last year. 

Kimball’s brother Kyle is a stout 61-year-old whose trawler, the Sea Horse, has mostly gathered barnacles this year as he waits for market conditions to improve. Kyle stays busy as the president of the Port Arthur Area Shrimpers Association, where he reels off shrimp tales to politicians and scientists. (But don’t address him as Mr. President. “I don’t like titles,” he says. “I’m just plain ol’ Kyle.”) He’s aboard today to help Murry manage the net and cull the catch—assuming the Nevada Gayle ever gets moving. 

Murry shifts into reverse, clank-clunk. He switches gears, drives forward again. Hits the gas. The boat pushes forward one inch, then one more, barely winning a race against the lifeless marina beside it.

Then the Nevada Gayle breaks free. 

She accelerates to 8 miles per hour, hitting her stride. Murry steers east into the Neches proper, passing under the bridge; a handful of brown pelicans cruise alongside, cheering on the boat and her bedraggled captain as the mainland recedes into the background.

The night before, as a cheddar-biscuit moon hangs over the port city of Orange, about twenty miles northeast of Port Arthur, a Catholic priest walks into a bar. Technically, it’s a bar and grill named Spanky’s, a down-home affair with old-timey rowboats affixed to shiplap walls and the mother of all crawfish suspended from the ceiling. The priest is 66-year-old Sinclair Oubre, who directs the Stella Maris, a local ministry that advocates for shrimpers and other mariners. He sits at a booth and reviews the laminated menu. There’s the shrimp: boiled, coconut-crusted, fried, grilled. 

But not all seafood is created equal, he says. Some of the shrimp served at Spanky’s is imported—farmed instead of fished. Oubre has it on good authority, however, that the popcorn shrimp comes from these Gulf waters. So that’s what he orders, with tartar and cocktail sauces, homemade onion rings, and a Budweiser draft. 

This part of the Texas coast is one of the state’s shrimping hot spots. Historically, the industry has provided roughly 1,200 jobs in the Port Arthur–Beaumont metropolitan area. When shrimpers are flush with cash, other local businesses prosper. “Before, if you were hardworking and you were willing to spend a great deal of time at sea, you could make a very good living for your family,” Oubre says. “When shrimping is good, it’s good.”

And when it’s bad, it’s bad. Total wages from shrimping in the area fell to just $10 million in 2022, a 27 percent decrease from a decade before. Shrimpers are selling vessels and equipment at deep discounts. “It feels like drowning,” says Binh Han, a 42-year-old shrimper in Port Arthur. Han’s parents fled Vietnam in the eighties, and once they arrived in Texas they started to shrimp. “That’s what they knew in Vietnam, being on the water,” he says. Like the Kimballs, Han spent his formative years around a shrimp boat. The business did well enough for his family to send him to college, though he left before graduating to go into the lumber business. Like Murry, Han returned to shrimping later in life.

“The dads and uncles and grandfathers, they’re proud of providing for the family,” Han says. “It’s sad now to see the desperation, the despair, that they can’t provide.” Han operates two shrimp boats, which he still sends out. But razor-thin profit margins mean there’s little room for error. Losing a net or an anchor to a rough sea would cancel out any financial return; a major accident would be ruinous. In September, Han’s boats were on a monthlong fishing trip in Louisiana. “Sometimes, we’ll feel so blessed just to break even,” Han says. “I’m gambling right now. I’m not a gambler, but I have no choice.” 

Oubre traces shrimpers’ troubles to the early aughts, when India, Thailand, and Vietnam launched large-scale “aquaculture” operations to farm shrimp, which is cheaper than catching them in the wild. Seafood importers in the U.S. snapped up the farmed shrimp at cut-rate prices, gleefully filling their freezers with so much product that it would take two years to dig out from the surplus. Demand then tanked, which sent the industry reeling. Currently, around 95 percent of the shrimp served in the United States is imported. 

Oubre steers clear of imported shrimp mostly because he believes in supporting local fishermen, but also for health reasons. Fish farms can breed harmful bacteria because of the high volume of the animals’ fecal matter that stays contained in the pens that house them. Some growers use livestock antibiotics that are banned by U.S. regulators, to counter contamination. “People don’t pay attention,” Oubre says. “They just pick up the package and say, ‘Wow, look at this! A pound of shrimp for two dollars!’ ” 

But it’s nearly impossible for Texas consumers to know where their shrimp comes from. The menu at Spanky’s doesn’t say. Just a few miles east on Interstate 10, in Louisiana, state law requires restaurants, grocers, and other seafood sellers to disclose their shrimp’s provenance. This year, Alabama also passed a so-called “country of origin labeling” law; a similar bill is under consideration in Mississippi. 

“We’re hoping Texas is not too far behind,” says Nikki Fitzgerald, a marine and coastal resources agent for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and its Texas Sea Grant College Program in Jefferson and Chambers counties. She’s fielded calls from Texas lawmakers interested in passing such laws here. No such bill has been filed in Texas, but the issue may get a hearing when the state legislature reconvenes in January. Last summer the House Committee on Culture, Recreation & Tourism invited testimony on the subject, which prompted some surprise—and disgust—from committee members. “I think about the times I got excited about all-you-can-eat shrimp,” said Representative Josey Garcia, a San Antonio Democrat. “Now I’m cringing.”

In Washington, Congressman Troy Nehls, a Republican who represents a crab claw–shaped district southwest of Houston, proffered a bill in April that would prohibit the use of federal funds to support overseas aquaculture. The legislation, titled the “Save Our Shrimpers Act,” takes aim at taxpayer-funded financial institutions such as the World Bank, which provides money for shrimp farms abroad. Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat whose district includes the shrimping mecca of Brownsville, has also signed on to the legislation, which has yet to make it out of committee.

While shrimpers wait for a legislative solution, they can increase sales by finding a niche. This year, Fitzgerald saw a Galveston shrimper peddling his product at a San Marcos campground from a refrigerated truck. “[Shrimpers] can cut out the middleman” to increase profits, she says. Her organization also publishes a map on its website that lists a few dozen restaurants and markets along the coast that serve local seafood. 

Many establishments in Port Arthur are supplied in part by JBS Packing, one of the biggest shrimp processors on the Gulf Coast. The plant is run by Trey Pearson, who buys every major shrimp species in the Gulf and the south Atlantic. The catches are unloaded before being peeled, headed, deveined, and then sent to clients. Pearson buys only wild-caught shrimp, he says. Still, that doesn’t necessarily translate into higher prices for the shrimpers who sell to him, thanks to the competitive pressure of the import market. His daily price list fluctuates, and the prices he sets can make or break a fishing trip.

Pearson is the president of the American Shrimp Processors Association, which has filed a legal case with the U.S. Commerce Department, arguing that Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam have violated U.S. antidumping laws that forbid selling products at “below fair value.” The trade group wants tariffs placed on shrimp imported from those countries. A similar strategy was deployed in 2005 and 2014 with some success. “It’s not a perfect fix,” Pearson says, “but it’s the only thing that we have as a tool at this time.”

The Nevada Gayle has been cruising for two hours, long enough to skirt Sabine Lake and enter Louisiana waters. Behind the boat, a 32-foot-long net combs the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway for white shrimp. They’re priced at 50 cents a pound today—one-third of what they fetched three years ago. But the shrimp are plentiful, and if Murry can catch enough, this trip will be worth it. “Right now, I’m doing pretty good if I clear three hundred dollars a day,” he says. Murry’s been dragging the net across the muddy bottom for an hour—time to draw it up. 

He goes on deck and activates a groaning winch to bring up the net. It emerges from the water like a bulging green teardrop, dripping murky seawater from its woven crosshatches. Kyle loosens the tie strap that holds it closed; the catch drops to the deck in a heap. The haul is mostly shrimp, but a fair number of other critters have been caught in the dragnet, including trout, catfish, and bay whiffs. The bycatch is tossed back; an orgy of pelicans and gulls descends. At a chest-high culling table, Kyle sorts shrimp by size, putting each in its corresponding plastic bucket. 

After getting a good look at their catch, Murry prepares to head back for the day. He restarts the Nevada Gayle’s engine and turns the trawler toward land. 

On the long ride home, Murry considers his future. He had surgery to treat congestive heart failure five years ago, but his ticker still functions at only 40 percent. “I’ve had two back surgeries, three cancer surgeries,” he says. After a round of chemotherapy, his wavy red hair grew in straight and reddish-brown. The new mop took some getting used to. “When people ask me how I’m doing, I say, ‘I’m doing fine. I’m above ground.’ ” He says he’ll shrimp for as long as he can; his health problems make him a liability on construction jobs. His father, Eric Charles “Peanut” Kimball, shrimped until he died, four years ago, at 82.

The Rainbow Bridge comes back into view and the Nevada Gayle glides underneath it, turning back into the shallow waterway leading to the slip. Murry’s talking about how the batteries in his defibrillator need to be changed out when his boat hits the sandbar again. 

“He put the defibrillator in there because—damn, are we stopped again?—he said my heart was doing all the work and he wanted the machine to regulate it.” Murry revs the engine. The vessel’s at a standstill. He revs again. Nothing. “Man, that tide’s really going out. We’re on bottom.” The boat shakes and rumbles with effort as Murry tries to work free of the rut. “I just need to get my nose over . . . I know where I need to be.” 

And the Nevada Gayle breaks free again. 

Back at his dock, he off-loads and ices down the catch. He’ll clear approximately $400 in profit for today’s haul, minus expenses. Murry Kimball never wanted to be a shrimper. But as long as his heart pumps blood, he’ll follow in his father’s footsteps tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, switching gears and carving a hard path through the sand.  

Abilene-based journalist Christopher Collins has written for Texas Highways and The Texas Observer. 

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the title “Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy.” Subscribe today.