Delcambre Direct

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By selling straight from the boat to the consumer, Louisiana shrimpers are turning the tide against cheap imports

It's high noon over Bayou Carlin in Delcambre, Louisiana, and Lil Man is closing up shop. The stark white boat bobs in the canal as its four-man crew hoses the deck of muddy seawater littered with crustacean shells and antennae.

In addition to the regional regulars from nearby parishes, Lil Man has seen visitors from Arkansas, Oregon, and distant cousin Canada this Saturday morning, all of whom lined up to buy more than three thousand pounds of fresh Gulf shrimp during Delcambre's second-ever monthly seafood and farmers market.

“I should have worn my shirt!” calls out René Gregoire—Lil Man's captain and a lifetime shrimper-to a queue now fourteen people long. “It says, 'Friends don't let friends eat imported shrimp!'”

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Since a drive to the coast is still required to buy fresh-off-the-boat shrimp, the community of Delcambre implemented a marketing program beyond the traditional scope of publicity campaigns, called Delcambre Direct Seafood, in order to battle shrimp imports. “Since the '80s, the shrimping business has been going down because of imported products,” explained Thomas Hymel, an agent with the LSU AgCenter and the Louisiana Sea Grant Program. “A lot of our fishermen were going out of business. Delcambre Direct is a program that we started here in this community as a way to really revitalize the shrimping industry.”

Delcambre Direct Seafood was established in summer 2010-just weeks after the BP oil spill-as a way to directly connect shrimpers and fishermen to customers through a website. The website (DelcambreDirectSeafood.com) provides photos, bios, and contact information for the fishermen and women who choose to participate in the program. A regularly updated message board details arrival times for each individual fisher coming in with a “Fresh Catch” (as the message board is named), and in this way, the site's followers are first to learn about any incoming product via email update.

Hymel said that by guaranteeing the shrimpers direct buyers as soon as they dock with their catch, they can get double the price they would have had they sold their products wholesale. “It creates this easy connection between people that are wanting seafood, and people who are providing it, because we had kind of lost this community connection for local seafood,” explained Hymel. “Used to be everybody knew a shrimper. But now, you've got so many new people around, different people, and it's not the same as it was.”

Delcambre is positioned mere miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico beyond the Vermilion Bay, and the small fishing town is just less than one square mile in area with a population of around 1,800 residents. The shrimping industry is so integral to the way of life here that the town hosts an annual shrimp festival every August, but Gregoire-a professed water-lover who's been shrimping since he was a teenager-said the shrimping industry, as a whole, is shifting.

“When I started shrimping, I was young, and it was good,” observed Gregoire, now forty-eight. He described the scene years ago, when shrimp boats would line the full length of the marina canal.

At the market, Gregoire was the only shrimper present.

“There's still good money to be made,” he said, “but it's not like it used to be.”

The industry had already been suffering decline when the BP spill wreaked additional havoc in 2010. Gregoire wasn't able to shrimp that year; so, like the thousands of fishermen out of work during that period, he sought refuge working with the cleanup crews.

“I'll be honest with you: BP did us good,” he said. “They really did. They helped a lot of people.” Soon, Gregoire was back to business as usual, and no trace of the disaster has plagued him since.

But the oil spill was just another factor in an already plummeting local industry in which fuel prices stayed at record highs and the massive expansion of imported seafood began driving down the prices local shrimpers could earn for their catches.

Albert Granger of Granger's Seafood in Maurice, Louisiana, has been shrimping for more than two decades, although he sells whatever he catches-be it crawfish, crabs, frogs, et cetera. Like Gregoire, he said he was guided to his profession by his love for the water. But he's witnessed the industry shift, too.

“When I first started shrimping [in the '80s], they were talking about the problem of overseas shrimp,” Granger recalled. “We didn't see it coming; and all of a sudden, they threw that market on us and it knocked our prices down. When I started shrimping, the shrimp that you get $1 for now, you got $2.50 a pound twenty years ago. Can't compete.”

The new millennium brought new technology, and a struggling industry sought to harness this power to net customers and drive prices.

“People, they got knocked down really to the bottom; and so now, the old way of doing business is not viable anymore,” explained Hymel. “So for them to survive and go forth, they gotta sell some of their product in the market, fresh.”

Delcambre Direct was the prototype; and it was an immediate success, spawning three spin-off sites-Cameron Parish, the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, and LaFourche and Terrebonne parishes-all under the umbrella of Louisiana Direct Seafood and helmed by Hymel. Because of Delcambre Direct's success, the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission awarded a $560,000 grant to launch these programs.

“It's just a whole different atmosphere now for the fisherman,” said Hymel. “There was nothing else out there that was gonna save them. There wasn't a different price point by selling wholesale, and you can only get so efficient. It was time. It gives them a chance to look forward and grab it, and go forward and make new plans.”

Gregoire said the website has boosted his business, and Granger agreed.

“It's helped everybody, and it's helped bring the price up, 'cause the demand's getting more and more for it,” said Granger. “We have to compete in our own market. And I think it's helping. We just need to get our price up; and with the demand there now for the fresh shrimp, that's helping a lot.”

The success of the direct purchasing program goes further than fresh: now South Louisiana shrimp has its own brand.

Vermilion Bay Sweet, as it's called, was revealed at last August's Delcambre Shrimp Festival and represents the first packaged, Louisiana-branded, year-round, frozen shrimp product available on the market.

“It's good stuff,” asserted Cheryl Granger, Albert's wife, who markets Vermilion Bay Sweet to local supermarkets and oversees its distribution to markets that have already picked up the product. The shrimp are locally caught, handpicked, and regionally packaged as an additive-free, frozen product available in all seasons. They come in two sizes: a $19.99 package of 26-30-sized shrimp (which translates to twenty-six to thirty pieces per pound) and a 70-90 that goes for $8.

“It's locally caught,” added Cheryl, “and that's what makes it special.”

It's also the first product to come out of Louisiana with the “authentic” Louisiana seafood seal.

Port of Delcambre Director Wendell Verret said that the national trend to buy local and organic-paired with modern, flashy packaging-is the driver behind Vermilion Bay Sweet's marketing push.

“That's the whole movement, and it's going on across the whole country,” explained Verret.

“People are just tired of big-box mega-food. You don't know where your food's being produced, what they're putting in it. And plus, local is all about the flavor. It's a lot better flavor. We've still got a long way to go, but we know we're on the right track.”

The shrimpers are optimistic, too.

“It's only gonna grow,” said Albert Granger. “It's doing fine so far. We have a vision. It's not completely better yet, but we have a vision.”

Gregoire said he doesn't have an end to his career in sight.

“I don't know nothin' else,” said Gregoire. “I got out of school when I was fifteen, and shrimping is all I've done since. That's all I know how to do is shrimp. Shrimp-and chase women.” He smirked as he put his arm around his wife JoAnn, who serves as Lil Man's “queen” of the deck on every shrimping trip.

“It's good,” he continued. “Shrimp are still good. Still edible. It just can't get no better. It just can't get no better.”