Tariffs and Fish

With new tariffs on overseas products going into effect back in April, how will this affect our fishing and fish consumption? Our readership obviously catches more fish than the general public, but here are some early thoughts.

The price of most fish at the market will increase, especially many tons of tilapia and catfish fillets and shrimp shipped from overseas. I’ve never been a fan of those…different species of catfish grown in crowded ponds over there, jammed together shoulder-to-shoulder at feeding time. There is no regulation on the quality of food pellets fed to those fish, including antibiotics. When my fishing club (I call it the grumpy old man’s club) has their monthly fish fry and most of the fillets are obviously not from area lakes, I look for a couple of whole fish from the fryer, such as bluegills and crappie. Many of our guys are now too old to fish, and supplement our cookouts with imports. If it’s strictly Asian catfish on the menu, I stick with the cheese grits and hush puppies.

Avoiding imported fish goes all the way back to Port O’Connor fish fries we held back in the late 1980s, when I saw my first big box of fillets marked with Chinese lettering. It was a Friday with 20 guests showing up, June and very hot, and the wind (of course) was blowing and local fishing was slow. Younger in those days, we jumped in Jimmy Crouch’s boat and ran to the first big oil rig about eight miles off the jetties. Where the water was still muddy. Choppy, too. Snapper fishing was a joke there, so we rigged up corks with fish scraps underneath, pitched them out there, and caught 8-10 blacktip sharks from 2-3 feet long. Soon, the ammonia smell from the big Igloo would turn your head around, if not worse, so we retreated back to the dock. Without the skins those fillets smelled like normal fish. Our guests were impressed, and said those were the biggest trout fillets they’d ever seen. So, where there’s a will there’s a way for acquiring local fish instead of imports.

There are disturbing videos and stories on YouTube of Asian fish farms, some with tilapia raised on pig poop. And Norwegian farm-raised salmon with very high levels of PCBs, thanks to food pellets cooked and dried from trawler bycatch from the (almost landlocked) Baltic Sea that borders nine countries. And videos of Asian longline boats that stay at sea for years, unloading their catch while offshore to factory vessels. The Chinese fleet wanders the world’s seas and uses ill-paid captive labor from other countries.

Locally and conservation-wise, with increasing prices on imported fish, we may see more fishing pressure on our domestic bay and offshore fish. More pressure over time could lead to bag limits being tightened by TP&W.

American shrimpers will likely see the most benefits from tariffs. They’ve been beaten down for decades, competing against Asian shrimp going for as little as a dollar a pound. The American public consumes millions of pounds of shrimp and most consumers have forgotten the taste of real Gulf shrimp, which is more firm and actually has a flavor. As much as 90-percent of shrimp consumed in America is from Asia and other countries, and the shrimp there are raised in farms often carved out of mangrove country. Not sure what their shrimp are fed, but a good dose of antibiotics probably helps their over-crowded ponds. Efforts to build domestic shrimp farms in Texas have resulted in a dozen locations around the state, most of them away from the coast, always a good idea lest some Asian shrimp species escapes into the bays, which has happened before. We can assume new tariffs will benefit these Texas companies.

Increased shrimping effort in the bays and offshore will have a negative effect with the wasted bycatch, which years ago was formerly shoveled overboard. Today on the big offshore boats, everything is dumped into salt tanks and killed, fish and crabs left floating. They are skimmed off the top and tossed overboard. The shrimp sink and are scooped up. Board or pull alongside a big shrimpboat this summer while fishing offshore and you will find big sacks of salt stacked on deck.

Countless tons of small fish are wasted by shrimpboats, with an estimate years ago of an estimated billion golden croakers annually. The fishing public today scarcely knows about the former autumn runs of tasty golden croaker we once had. Sand trout back then were plentiful, too. Farther offshore in blue water, I’ve seen plenty of tiny red snapper floating behind anchored shrimpboats. Some of the big boats also carried big, illegal fish traps offshore, where they were left at the snapper rocks. At least the turtle excluder devices finally installed on those boats in about 1990 began kicking out the sea turtles while they were still alive. Anyway, increasing efforts offshore in American waters will bring increased mortality on a variety of marine species. TP&W has been buying out shrimpboat permits for a long time, and it will be interesting to see if that trend is reversed.

China is also a major producer of shrimp nets now subject to tariffs, but they’re also made here and there along the Gulf Coast, notably in Bayou La Batre in Alabama. Fictional home of Forest Gump, if memory serves.

One item I won’t mind seeing heavily tariffed is the shell shops that have sprung up along the Gulf Coast for so long. Recently we were stuck behind a slow 18-wheeler truck on a farm road headed to the coast, full of “seashell products” from the Pacific Ocean. All of those big chunks of coral, shells and small fish coated in lacquer have to come from somewhere, right? Most are stripped from coral reefs by Asian or Filipino crews, often by slave labor. They anchor over isolated reefs, jump overboard, and grab anything that might carry a price tag. Gillnets, hammers, crowbars, bleach, all used on the reefs. Back in the late ’80s someone sent me an Australian magazine with many pictures. They’d managed to board a big boat from the Philippines that carried over 100 young boys equipped with nothing but goggles. They’d jump overboard and pry up or gather anything of value. The kids slept on deck, ate small dried fish, while more valuable fish were stored in the freezer. Turns out the kids were sold by their parents to the boat owner. If a kid somehow escaped and made it home, he was returned to the boat.

Today, as mentioned, indentured slaves are common on the Asian boats that stay at sea for years. Many of the boats are owned by Chinese, but most of the crew are lured---I mean hired—from other countries. Their passports are confiscated and they’re forced to work months or years to pay off their “debts.” The few Chinese crewmen are treated well and have their cell phones. Those from other countries, not so. There have been fatalities not easily explained. Pulling longlines for years, finning the sharks, fishing in illegal areas, it’s all part of their program. And much of that fish winds up in American restaurants and fish markets. Or did, unless tariffs somehow put a stop to it.

Another area of concern are the countless items of fishing tackle from China that will see a jump in price. I saw one headline that said fishing tackle sales will be “walloped” by tariffs. Sixty percent of America’s fishing tackle is imported, with 40 percent from China. The Pure Fishing corporation is heavily invested in China. Pure Fishing owns Penn, Abu Garcia, Berkley, Ugly Stik, Fenwick, Pflueger, Savage Gear, Plano, Fin-Nor, Frabill, Greys (British-made fly tackle), Johnson, JRC clothing, Mitchell, Hardy (British fly tackle), Shakespeare, SpiderWire, Stren, and Van Staal in Oklahoma.

Johnson alone makes many items, among them their Sprite spoons, of which I’ve used a great many. Are they going to double in price? Looks like it’s time to stock up on Dixie flutter spoons, available in numerous colors, now made in Missouri by a retired Army veteran. Older Texas coastal fishermen well-remember the original Dixie Jet spoon, made in Houston, designed for driving long casts into the wind, out across the surf into green water where they were attacked by trout, Spanish mackerel and redfish.

For us fishermen, it’s either stock up before a price increase, pay more at the store, or use what you have around the house.