Mariah Jade Shrimp Vessel Working to Better our Shrimp Fishery and the Environment.

Over the last several years my husband, David, and our vessel have been working closely with the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation and National Marine Fisheries. David had developed what is now called the Chauvin TED (Turtle Excluder Device). The pictures taken below are of David and NMFS personnel making sure the turtles can flow through the contraption that David has worked on.

For many years before the BRD's (Bycatch Reduction Device) became a regulation to adhere to, our vessels were pulling devices to let the bycatch flow through.? The objective of our trawling trip is to catch shrimp as clean as possible. The purpose of letting out the bycatch is not to have any extra weight in the nets besides shrimp. The person at the wheel checks what is called a try-net every half hour aboard our vessel to see what is being caught. We do this to see what needs to be changed in the place we are trawling or we may just need to fix our nets to float more. We see through testing that our TED's also let out bycatch. In reality the fishermen are actually working with two different bycatch reduction devices and will hopefully get the credit as doing so.

We believe that is extremely important to maintain the balance of the Gulf of Mexico where we shrimp. Our goal is to make sure there is a future for the generations to come to partake in the shrimping industry. We have taught our children the importance of preserving our way of life and the gulf. Our children have attended and still attend meetings in which much of the environmental and shrimping sectors have to reach some kind of compromise on what is to take place in our future. We do much of this work by allowing observers aboard our vessel from the National Marine Fisheries Service and The Gulf and Atlantic Fisheries Foundation.

At this time, I sit on an advisory board to the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council. We meet once or twice a year to vote on different regulations that are being dealt with at the time. We have just met for the first time of 2006. The regulations that are being proposed at this time are somewhat grabbing at thin air due to not knowing the state of the industry since the flooding of shrimp imports, to those who have gotten out of the industry due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the devastation that followed these two hurricanes on the eastern and western portions of Louisiana. The hurricanes have taken out so much of the shrimping structure (ice houses, processors, fishermen's homes, vessels, fuel docks?etc.) that we need time to re-group to figure out just how many of the fishermen and processors are left in Louisiana.

Even with these things happening, we are still doing some testing for the agencies that we work with on a voluntary basis. We have done a series of TED's testing to test different types of TED's against the older models and such. Also have tested different types of netting against what's been used for many years for fuel efficiency. My husband is teaching my son to also work to better our industry since he has decided to follow in his dad's footsteps. We feel it's important to teach the younger generation how to work with the different agencies within our realm.

My husband, David, also attends the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation meetings each year to address Turtle Excluder Devices and Bycatch Reduction Devices. The meetings provide the necessary avenue to also look for ways to become more efficient in burning fuel.

We are now working with different sectors to obtain information in dealing with the red snapper issues. Both of our vessels are outfitted with electronic logbooks. This enables LGL, independent study company, to obtain critical information from our vessels such as depth of water in which the vessels are shrimping within, area of water shrimping in, how many knots the vessel was making in the water and many other details. In working with this system, we are able to find out how many vessels are working in areas that actually have red snapper and prove our case to the Gulf Council, CCA and National Marine Fishery Service. The Gulf Council has stated certain depths of water in which red snapper are in. We are working with LGL to acquire many more vessels to outfit their vessels with this system.