For generations of shrimpers like Rodney Olander, it's a living as well as a lifestyle

Photos and story by COLIN MURPHEY
If Rodney Olander had set out last week to fish for blue crab, it might have been a decent catch. But he was fishing for shrimp.
And the shrimp harvest off the coast of St. Mary Parish has been anything but bountiful this season. With his son-in-law and deckhand Eric Louviere aboard the fishing vessel Big Rod, Olander has been catching shrimp but not the kind he wants. The shrimp that end up in the nets of the F/V Big Rod are small.
While the small shrimp can be sold for a modest profit, they don’t bring in anywhere near the price he needs to justify the costs associated with operating a professional shrimping operation.
The problem is complex, according to Olander. The main issue is a byproduct of the catastrophic flooding upstream from St. Mary Parish. And as if it weren’t bad enough for the people of the Baton Rouge area cleaning up from the floodwaters that devastated the area, the damage is now making its way to the waters of St. Mary Parish that are vital to those like Olander and Louviere that depend on it for their livelihood.
The main problem is salt. Or the lack thereof. Olander said, as a result of runoff from the flooding, the waters off St. Mary Parish have been inundated with freshwater. And that’s a problem for shrimp.
“This is a bad year mostly because of the floodwaters,” Olander said. “The salinity is off. The water is warm enough, but if there’s no salinity, the shrimp don’t grow. The bigger the shrimp, the bigger the money. But our catch has been less and less.”
Olander and his family have been fishing the waters off Cypremort Point for nearly four decades. And while Olander did not say this season was the worst it’s ever been as the catch has been known to naturally fluctuate, the problem is there have been several seasons in a row now of abnormally low harvest.
“We’ve had bad seasons before,” Olander said. “But it’s rough when you have back-to-back bad seasons in one year. We are on our third season of being well below average. And when you get that many bad seasons like that, it’s hard to make a living.”
As Olander moved from spot-to-spot last week, constantly chased by a flock of rabid seagulls eager for a bite of by-catch, he said it would take a number of things to improve the situation. The primary issues, according to Olander, were time and money.
“It’s just nature,” Olander said. “You have good years and you have bad years. One thing that would help is pay us for our product. Quit comparing us to the foreign shrimp coming into the market. A lot of times the import price is higher than the domestic price and that doesn’t make any sense. That’s the number one thing that would help. If we could get more money for our product, we could survive in this business. But every year, it’s getting harder and harder.”
Salt isn’t the only problem facing shrimp fishermen. Competition with foreign markets, increasing costs for fuel and other necessities combined with a lower price for domestic wild-caught shrimp as well as lack of access to historically fruitful shrimping grounds due to competition with crab fishermen have all played a role in dealing a blow to Olander and other fishermen.
The evidence was everywhere to be seen when Olander was out on the water last week. Or actually, the evidence was nowhere to be seen. Last week, with a visibility of several miles in every direction, Olander’s was the only shrimping boat on the water.
“Look out there,” Olander said. “Do you see any shrimping boats? There’s a reason for that. No shrimp, no boats. It’s just not worth it anymore to come out here.”
When asked why he still does it if the market is so stagnant and the catch so light, Olander had a very simple response.
“What else am I going to do? It’s all I’ve ever done.”
(More photos on Page 14)