The month of February has brought mostly sunless and cloudy skies, which has put a damper on one industry that is used to thriving in Corpus Christi.
“We get less shrimp when it’s foggy outside,” said Aaron Holt.
Holt works at a local seafood restaurant, where he says the amount of shrimp being sold to the restaurant has decreased in the last few weeks.
Veteran shrimper James Marks says the issue stems from not getting shrimpers out of the docks.
“Most of the time they shut the traffic in the ship channel off when its foggy like that,” said Marks.
And for anyone to take a boat out in dense fog is a risk.
“You can’t see anything,” said Marks.
In turn, the fewer amount of boats that go out to sea, the less amount of shrimp there is to sell.
But that problem can be remedied with radar technology.
“It shows you targets out there and anything around you is going to show up on this thing,” said Marks.
Radar allows boaters to “see” through dark or stormy weather.
The problem is many shrimp boats don’t have radar, making it difficult and dangerous to navigate the ocean.
“You get run over,” said Marks.
Up until now, shrimp prices haven’t seen a direct increase, but if the fog continues much longer, that may change.
