The city of Bayou La Batre, the epicenter of the seafood industry in Alabama, is looking for the federal and state governments to provide relief to shrimpers in the area, following an influx of imported shrimp that has depressed the industry.

On August 17, Mayor Henry Barnes sent a letter to Gov. Kay Ivey, asking for assistance for the seafood industry in the city. The same day, the Bayou La Batre City Council passed a resolution declaring a disaster due to “shrimp dumping”—the practice of foreign shrimp vendors flooding the market with farm-raised shrimp that sells for lower prices than the wild-caught Alabama Gulf Shrimp.

“Any kind of help would do,” Barnes said. “We’re not the kind of people that actually are used to asking for help. Bayou La Batre people are normally independent, and this is something new, us asking for help. It’s a lot of hard-working people down there.”

“It’s a dying industry”

Tammy Hall, owner of SeaHarvest Fresh Shrimp in Bayou La Batre, says that the shrimpers are having trouble selling the shrimp they catch to processing factories. Hall and her family began selling directly to customers in 2020, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic and in part because of the lower prices due to imported shrimp.