She'd have rather awakened on board the Mariah Jade, where
she and David had spent summers with their three children in
the two years after David finished building the shrimp trawler
in 2000. The dream of a lifetime, the 73-foot, steel-hulled
ship was four years in construction in the Chauvins' back yard.
But plummeting shrimp prices and debt on the boat had prompted
the Chauvins to begin retailing directly to consumers beginning
in August 2002. That gave Kimberly the day job of selling shrimp
to consumers and building a retail business.
The threat of even more extensive cheap imports under the
pending free trade agreement prompted Chauvin to take to the
road on this Saturday in July. Once in New Orleans she would
walk in protest with Green Party members, Pax Christi activists,
and self-declared anarchists wearing black face paint and dark
bandanas.
At the anti-CAFTA protest, rain clouds gathered over Congo
Square while a knot of shrimpers wearing red, white and blue
caps stood a little apart. A.J. Fabre, president of the Louisiana
Shrimp Association, took the megaphone to blast imported farm-raised
shrimp as a threat to public health and a way of life. "The
domestic shrimpers are catching healthy, great-tasting shrimp
without pesticides and antibiotics being added such as those
that are grown on shrimp farms," he boomed. "Our shrimp pond
was designed by God, not man or government."
As the procession moved off toward Canal Street, the Louisiana
trawlers brought up the rear. Shielded by a banner spray-painted
"Go Wild for Wild-Caught Shrimp," they kept a discreet distance
from the rest of the protest.
It was an incongruous place for a conservative Cajun to be.
Even more incongruously, the action Chauvin and about 20 other
shrimpers were supporting in New Orleans was "Save the Mangroves,"
an international movement in solidarity with shrimp fishermen
opposed to the destruction of mangrove swamps by shrimp farms.
On the same day in Grand Isle, a flotilla of about 30 shrimp
trawlers staged a parallel demonstration, strapping "No CAFTA"
and "Fair Trade, not Free Trade" signs to their rigging. As
sport fishermen left the harbor for the Grand Island Tarpon
Rodeo that morning, the shrimpers -- who are not known for their
love of environmentalists -- tooted their horns in support of
what amounts to an environmental campaign.
The terms of CAFTA are still under negotiation, but the agreement
is believed to be modeled closely on the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which set out to stimulate trade and
encourage investment between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The shrimpers fear that CAFTA will encourage large-scale shrimp
farms in Central America. Shrimp farms, in turn, crowd out independent
coastal fishermen, the shrimpers say. They further claim that
such shrimp flood the market with an antibiotic- and pesticide-ridden
product that poses a health risk.
Against such imports, domestic wild shrimp prices took a dramatic
dive between 2000 and 2001, falling by more than a third in
that year alone. By this summer, wholesalers were paying well
below $2 a pound for large shrimp -- prices that paralleled
those of the 1970s.
The price tumble has sent shrimp trawling communities into
a panic. On one hand, shrimpers are having to educate themselves
on government regulation, imports and international trade. At
the same time, many are urgently trying to save themselves by
marketing their wild-caught Louisiana shrimp directly to consumers
as a niche product.
For Chauvin, whose husband is a fourth-generation fisherman,
it's not merely a fight to save an industry. It's also a fight
to preserve her home and her heritage. And if it means going
into new territory to fight major institutions, that's what
she'll do.
"We were different from the other protesters," Chauvin recalls.
"We are folks who lived in our own backyards, not particularly
paying attention to the rest of the world. We attended church,
spent time with our families and worked very hard for the money
we made. I have to say that I felt out of place."
Call it the heritage of solitary Cajun trappers, a holdover
from pirate days or the orneriness of people who work alone
and keep their prize shrimping spots to themselves. Until now,
Louisiana shrimpers have never organized into anything more
than an incidental movement. Shrimpers staged a disciplined
shutdown of wholesalers during the so-called shrimp wars of
1938, when shrimpers were confronted with disastrous prices.
In the early 1980s, a group called Concerned Shrimpers briefly
stood together and refused to use turtle excluder devices, or
TEDs, on their nets. But there has been no sustained organization,
no ongoing education of membership, no movement.
But the framework for such a movement exists. At 5 a.m. on
a recent Friday, out in the water on Grand Isle Pass, there's
a buzz and crackle as the VHF on Kevin Curole's boat wakes up.
"Hey, cap," says Curole, who smiles when an older man's voice
comes back to him. "Naw, man, we trawled for two hours and got
about 10 pounds of shrimp," Curole answers. "Then we slept through
the alarm."
"You missed it," says the voice on the other end. "We pulled
plenty."
"Of what?" Curole asks, worried.
"Of fish, yeah," says the voice, laughing.
The conversations that come over these crackly radios are
musical and lilting, with an edge of Cajun French. At almost
any hour, outrageous stories and challenges travel from cabin
to cabin over the open waves. Viewed differently, this web of
communication is also a potential force for political organizing.
The land-based network up and down Lafourche is equally efficient.
A local tale holds that a young man once arrived in Raceland
from World War II, intent on surprising his mother, and found
the pig on the spit and the beer iced down by the time he reached
Golden Meadow.
 |
| Encouraged
by 2000's bumper year, many shrimpers, including Kevin and
Margaret Curole, made investments in new equipment that
they're now struggling to pay off. "We were victims of our
own success," says Margaret. |
| Photo
by Donn Young |
In this part of the world, the front-porch telegraph is a mean
machine.
This morning, Kevin, whose nickname "Godzilla" came from his
fearlessness around other boats, is barely awake himself. His
deck hand, Sonny "Bozo" (pronounced bo-ZO) Cheramie, is still
sacked out in the cavelike room under the front deck. After
three days of successful trawling, the two of them had spent
the last night pulling nets full of pogeys and bisqué,
or sardines, from the Grand Isle Pass. With a few good-natured
comments about journalists and bad luck, they went off to nap
at 11 p.m. and woke too late to try again.
The sky is just beginning to take on light as Curole edges
the Heavy Metal across Grand Lake towards Bayou Lafourche, going
home. In the ice chest are 800 pounds of medium and large shrimp
that he and his wife will retail in Galliano. Three days before,
Curole had delivered 900 pounds of shrimp to the shed in Grand
Isle and taken home $900 -- just enough to cover the cost of
the trip. On this morning, Curole knows he'll be getting between
$3 and $3.50 a pound. As daylight strengthens, he uses his cell
phone to call ahead to customers who are just waking up.
A year before, on May 7, 2002, Curole came in with a similar
cargo and was met with a price of 60 cents a pound for 36-40s
-- the medium-sized, moderately priced shrimp the Curoles consider
their bread and butter. His response was immediate. "I will
not work for 60&162;," he scrawled on a piece of wood he found
in the bulkhead, and he strapped the sign to the rigging. He
swore that he would give his shrimp away before he'd sell them
that low. Most of the other trawlers working in the pass that
day joined him. The media came. Friends and neighbors took the
shrimp. The boats sat it out for two weeks. Then the price moved
a nickel higher. Curole returned to work. He had bills to pay,
and the shrimp were running.
Moving inland, Curole points out the boats tied up along the
bayou. The beautiful red trawler to the left was repossessed
by the bank; Curole points out the U.S. Marshal's sticker in
the window. The green one further up hasn't been out all season.
The white one is being sold. A shrimp shed is boarded up. Beyond
the Golden Meadow floodgate, boats are tied up every 100 feet,
then every 50. Usually, Curole explains, those boats would be
on the other side of the floodgate during this season, chasing
the last of the big shrimp before the cold fronts come. Seeing
them so far from open water means that their owners have decided
for now not to shrimp.
Turning in to dock in Galliano at the Curoles' roadside stand,
the monument is impossible to miss. It's an old iron mast that
Kevin Curole bedecked with various tools of the fisherman's
trade. An antique shrimp basket crowns the pole; beneath it,
a crab trap, a gill net, a shrimp net and Kevin's grandmother's
oyster rake drape the arms. The display looks like a crucifix.
"This is my monument to every fishing industry that has fed
people from these bayous," says Curole, more angry than sad.
"Pretty soon, the monument may be all that's left."
The CAFTA protest provided an opportunity for calling attention
to the plight of Louisiana shrimpers, many of whom have "gone
on the job" -- a phrase meaning that they've taken other employment.
But the most immediate hope of Louisiana shrimpers these days
is an anti-dumping petition that the Southern Shrimp Alliance
is pressing with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The eight-state
coalition of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas shrimpers, processors
and wholesalers, is suing the federal government for tariffs
that will keep imported shrimp from drowning their prices.
To wade into the anti-dumping discussion is to get tangled
in a welter of national and global issues, from free trade to
World Trade Organization measures to compensation for domestic
producers. But hundreds of local shrimp trawlers and fishermen's
wives see in the pending fight a chance to salvage their lives
and their heritage. And for that, Louisiana shrimpers are willing
to take on the WTO -- and the world.
Tariffs on imported shrimp might address the price problem,
at least for a while. The hottest button on the industry's petition,
though, is not the tariffs themselves but how they would be
distributed. Under the U.S. Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset
Act of 2000, aka the Byrd Amendment, tariffs are divvied up
by U.S. Customs and sent directly to those hurt by the dumping.
Individual trawlers are looking at that money hungrily. Some
see it as a way to buy time and reorganize; others see it as
a ticket out of a failing business. If the petition is filed
before Dec. 15 of this year, it can include the prices paid
for shrimp in 2000, the last "good" year before the drop-off,
as a benchmark for establishing the dollar amount of damages.
The Louisiana Shrimp Association, a grassroots network led
by trawlers George Barisich and A.J. Fabre, has not decided
whether to contribute to the costs of the alliance's lawsuit
or to file its own parallel petition. The Southern Shrimp Alliance
has engaged the firm Dewey Ballantine LLP to press the dumping
petition. "The petition will be filed before the December 15
deadline," says Alliance president Eddie Gordon. "I guarantee
it."
There's some rancor over what role processors should play
in the negotiations and whether the Louisiana Shrimp Association's
accounting practices are transparent enough. The Alliance means
business -- to some trawlers, too much business. The group,
which originally sprang from a Louisiana Shrimp Association
meeting, has hired the Jones Walker law firm and former house
speaker Bob Livingston to lobby on behalf of shrimping issues
in Washington. They're also working on an ambitious marketing
program that would position wild shrimp as a premium product.
Yet another organization, the Louisiana Shrimp Industry Coalition,
has come forward to support the Southern Shrimp Alliance within
the state. No one needs to belong to any organization to benefit
from the dumping petition, says Gordon.
Louisiana lands the largest number of shrimp in the country,
weighing in with more than 106 million pounds for a total of
$139 million in 2002. Texas, with only 75 million pounds, outstrips
Louisiana in terms of income from shrimping, because Texas shrimp
are bigger. But both Texas and Louisiana pale next to the total
number of shrimp consumed in the country. Last year, Americans
imported roughly 1.2 billion pounds of shrimp. Comparatively,
the 169.7 million pounds of shrimp brought in by all domestic
U.S. shrimpers makes up a measly 12.4 percent of the U.S. market.
Pound for pound, there's no way individual trawlers in diesel-powered
boats can compete with vast acreages of shrimp ponds, especially
in countries where environmental restrictions are lax and labor
costs low. One approach for Louisiana fishermen, however, is
to sell their shrimp as something different -- a wild-caught,
even natural product that keeps individual shrimping families
and, indeed, coastal Louisiana culture afloat.
 |
| Photo
by Donn Young |
On a Tuesday night at Seasoned Seafood I in LaRose, a young man
turns heads as he strides through the room in tan clam diggers
and white shrimper's boots. With multiple piercings and a black
sleeveless T-shirt, he gains approving glances from men seated
with their families -- and flirtatious smiles from women.
The image of a young loner riding the waves, cowboy-style,
to haul in fresh shrimp is impossibly romantic. It's also specific
to just a few strips of land in the United States. Shrimping
sets Louisiana's coastal bayou country apart from what author
Howard Kunstler has called "the geography of nowhere," in which
local landmarks have been relentlessly eroded by commerce.
Along the blue-and-white oilcloth-covered picnic tables, proprietor
Ray St. Pierre has an easy air as he sits first with one family,
then another, talking to customers who also seem to be old friends.
St. Pierre trawled for 28 years. Since buying the restaurant
in 1999, he has gone out of his way to continue to support the
local fishing economy. A hand-lettered sign on the wall next
to the specials board spells it out for customers: "All seafood
we sell at Seasoned Seafood I is fresh Louisiana seafood. It
includes ALL broiled and fried seafoods, with the exception
of the Lobster, Stone Crabs and Dungeness Crabs."
"Louisiana seafood is the best in the world, better than anything,
but the bottom line is profit," St. Pierre says. "People want
it cheap. Are you going to buy an $11 po-boy?" He sighs. "They
have a long road ahead of them. I feel sorry for them. I have
good friends who are trawlers.
"They need to get along," he continues. "They need to get
together and talk to these people in Washington, D.C. or whoever
they need to talk to."
South of LaRose, Route 1 takes a deep breath of roadside fast-food
culture and dives south toward Galliano, Golden Meadow and,
finally, Grand Isle. Bayou Lafourche is a pretty little bayou,
with trawlers -- too many trawlers -- tied up along the road.
The farther you travel, the more you feel yourself slipping
into a more traditional way of life. Hardware stores advertise
trawling equipment and fishing tackle. In Cut Off and then in
Galliano, tidy, French-style Catholic churches are the centerpoints
of town. A sign on a pontoon bridge in Cut Off advises that
this is the Côte Blanche, named for a high spot of land
residents retreated to after the hurricane that destroyed Cheniére
Caminada.
A new sight along this bayou is the number of shrimp stands
where trawlers sell directly to the public. Until recently,
no self-respecting shrimper would sell retail -- in fact, doing
so was an affront to a shrimpers' dignity. Now that prices have
dropped, roadside stands have cropped up along with hand-painted
signs advising "fresh shrimp." Some of the stands are also selling
to restaurants, filling out trip tickets and receipts that satisfy
state requirements.
Margaret and Kevin Curole weren't sure what they'd do with
the 180-foot strip of land they owned along La. 1 in Galliano.
Then shrimp prices dropped and went lower. By last summer, retailing
looked like the best way to make the bank notes on the family's
50-foot skimmer boat. The couple built a wooden shelter complete
with a porch swing and a deck at water's edge, painted it red,
white and blue, and hung out a sign.
The Curoles' home is just one long block from the stand, back
up along 161st Street in a quiet part of town. Inside the tidy,
oak-shaded house that was once her parents', Margaret Curole
describes how locals can't believe that shrimpers are actually
hurting. "My daughter had someone say to her, 'Aw c'mon, shrimpers
are rich,'" she says.
The fact is that shrimpers were rich once. Curole recalls
a high school classmate who, right before their senior year,
walked into the local Mercury dealership and paid cash for a
brand new Marquis -- loaded. "He walked in in jeans and flip
flops and laid down the money he's made on his daddy's boat,"
she says, laughing at the memory.
As a rule, most shrimpers do like to buy things with cash;
they avoid going into debt. But in 2000, a bumper year, many
bank-wary shrimpers invested in new equipment and took on substantial
debts. As a result of that optimistic misstep, many Louisiana
shrimpers are now carrying heavy notes.
The Curoles were among those who invested in their business
in 2000, a year when they brought in a whopping $250,000 worth
of shrimp. After years of fishing in a boat without a proper
cabin, Kevin bought a used steel hull for $48,000 and invested
$200,000 to outfit it with twin V-8 engines, a generator, a
full cabin, air conditioning and four tiny bedrooms. The house
as well as the boat are tied to the mortgage, and then there's
insurance. Today, the family faces payments of $2,000 a month
on the boat before they can even think about taking care of
household expenses.
"We were victims of our own success," says Margaret. Now,
if the couple got a decent offer for the boat, they'd take it
in a heartbeat. Kevin has his Coast Guard license and already
pilots supply boats in the winter -- something he started doing
in 2001.
Margaret Curole has been with her husband for 17 years. He,
in turn, has been getting paid to work on a shrimp boat since
he was three. She would do anything to see her husband continue
to do what he loves.
That feeling has become common up and down this coast. Women
accustomed to seeing their husbands swagger and tell brash shrimping
stories are now worried by the air of defeat hanging over their
towns. A group of shrimpers' wives, Curole among them, started
"Ladies of Lafourche Shrimpers," an organization devoted to
educating the public about shrimping and its economic impact
along the coast. Even children have gotten into the act; 15-year-old
Caitlin Curole and her friend Joy Blanchard (daughter of "Ladies"
president Cathy Blanchard) put together a social studies project
called "Staying Afloat" illustrating the shrimpers' troubles.
The project won first place in a parish competition and second
place in the state.
Like so many Louisiana shrimpers and their families, Curole
has learned to think far beyond her own backyard. From a slightly
battered Gucci briefcase stuffed with paperwork, she draws clippings
on the arrest of a Mexican fisherman who trawled in corporate-owned
waters in Mexico; information on pending measures to make shrimpers
buy detection devices in the name of homeland security; information
on turtle excluder devices, tariffs and dumping.
In July, Margaret and her husband attended the World Forum
of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers as delegates from the Louisiana
Shrimp Association. The forum, held in Isla Mujeres, Mexico,
monitored the World Trade Association talks that were going
on at the same time in nearby Cancun.
 |
| Sonny
"Bozo" Cheramie examines the most recent catch, which should
bring between $3 and $3.50 a pound. |
| Photo
by Donn Young |
Closer to home, along Bayou Lafourche, bright yellow "Penny a
Pound" flags fly from the cables of many of the commercial shrimpers
who are still working. The campaign, run by the Louisiana Shrimp
Association, collects a penny from shrimpers for every pound of
shrimp they bring to local wholesalers, or sheds. The drive now
includes more than 700 contributors and has the feel of a war
bond effort. Drivers wave at shrimpers flying the flag, and contributors
greet one another with an air of grim solidarity.
On a Friday night in Dean Blanchard's shed in Grand Isle,
shrimpers linger a little after collecting for their shrimp.
John Wunstell is dismayed enough by what he's made on five days
of shrimping that he lets a reporter look at his check. On this
day in early October, 415 pounds of fairly large 21-25 shrimp
paid $1.60 a pound. Smaller 36-40s, of which Wunstell had 1,685
pounds, paid $1.10 a pound. His total comes to $2,517.
"Then take $700 for fuel, $200 for ice, $180 for groceries,"
says Wunstell. And the deck hand who helped aboard the 50-foot
Ramie's Wish? "I give him 20 percent of whatever's left after
that."
Blanchard, who everyone calls "Dean," has a reputation for
somehow paying a nickel a pound more than any other shed, even
when prices are low. He's sympathetic to the shrimpers even
as he cuts them checks that hardly pay their expenses. As treasurer
of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, though, Blanchard is an
agent of hope for those in the penny-a-pound campaign. For others
along the coastal bayou -- including several trawlers who quit
the Louisiana Shrimp Association over issues of financial accountability
-- he's an object of suspicion.
Blanchard hedges a little when asked how much the campaign
has collected, saying that he has a secretary who keeps track
of such things. After a few minutes though, he offers that the
campaign has about $140,000 in the bank. In addition, he says,
about 1,000 shrimpers have pledged to give 25 percent of the
federal disaster money they will receive this month to the cause.
A fundraiser planned at Boomtown Casino on Oct. 25 will add
a minimum of $10,000 to the collection, he says, and probably
more.
"It's not our money, it's not the board's money, it's the
fishermen's money," says Blanchard. "We'll present it to the
membership and ask them what they want us to do." Might the
money be contributed to the Southern Shrimp Alliance to help
with the anti-dumping petition? "Possible. But what I'm suggesting
to people is that we can join their lawsuit for free."
In spite of such ambiguities, several of the shrimpers gathered
in Blanchard's shed contribute their "penny a pound." As shrimper
John Chabert puts it, "I can't afford not to."
About ten miles south of Houma, behind a row of brick houses
along Bayouside Drive, the rigging of shrimp trawlers towers
over rooflines. In this neighborhood, it's possible to tie up
your trawler at the edge of your backyard.
On Kimberly Chauvin's kitchen table is a packet of promotional
materials from the Louisiana Seafood Promotion Council. Flyers
from an upcoming Louisiana Shrimp Industry Coalition fundraiser
lie nearby. (In September, Chauvin, once a Louisiana Shrimp
Association board member, decided to instead devote her efforts
to the Louisiana Shrimp Industry Coalition and the Southern
Shrimp Alliance.) The adjacent desk is piled with articles and
folders. To the left of the glowing computer monitor sits a
black box of index cards and her Rolodex -- the heart of her
business.
This summer, Chauvin stayed on shore to sell shrimp, even
walking the halls of hospitals to sell to doctors and nurses.
She also completed a course in entrepreneurship at Nicholls
State University in Thibodeaux. Her desk is littered with memos
about free trade and turtle excluder devices. It's also piled
up with titles like The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting
a Business and Off the Wall Marketing Ideas. Her
next project, she says, is a Web-based business for selling
shrimp long-distance.
"It's like this: when I saw what was happening, I told my
husband 'You do not work 17 years to fall flat on your face,'"
says Chauvin.
On the kitchen counter is a vase of a dozen red roses, left
over from the Chauvins' 17th wedding anniversary days before.
Other families in the area have cut back on everything they
have, even medical insurance, says Chauvin. She and David, meanwhile,
bit the bullet and made two more investments -- an "instant
quick freeze" system for freezing shrimp at sea and a storage
shed behind the house. They're hoping that both purchases pay
off.
She points to the master plan for the Terrebonne-Houma region,
which proposes no infrastructure for shellfish. She discusses
possible measures for throwing a monkey wrench in CAFTA. She
talks about how shocked the community will be when shrimpers
go out of business, when the house notes, car notes and boat
notes hit the banks. She talks about the men and women up and
down these bayous who, like her, are connecting the issues.
And she talks about surviving. "Anti-dumping is not going
to save us," she says. "It's a tool we can use, and if we can
use it we're going to use it. Marketing is going to help; creating
niche markets is going to help.
"People ask why we keep shrimping," she says. "We keep shrimping
because it's my husband's heart."
