Chine’s Cajun Net Shop

Every morning for the past seventy years or so, Lawrence “Chine” (pronounced “Chiney”) Terrebonne has gotten up and gone to work, first for his father’s net-making business, then for his own: Chine’s Cajun Net Shop, which he’s had since 1966. In 2021, he and his three employees—all men over the age of fifty-eight—still meet daily in his shop to quietly continue this centuries-old tradition.

Terrebonne, eighty-one, was born and reared in Golden Meadow, a small fishing village tucked into Bayou Lafourche that is home to just a few thousand people, mostly of Cajun descent. He learned the art of stitching shrimp trawling nets from cotton webbing when he was nine years old, back when he remembers boats tied up in the bayou for miles. “When I started there were fifty, sixty big shrimp boats that would go out and stay out for weeks,” he said.

“When I started there were fifty, sixty big shrimp boats that would go out and stay out for weeks." —Chine Terrebonne

The evolution from natural cotton nets, which needed to be spread out to dry in the sun to prevent rotting, to nets made with synthetic materials happened in the early twentieth century when nylon was invented and applied in industrial settings. As new fibers were developed, netmakers like Terrebonne switched to polyethylene or spectra, materials which now arrive in bales from mostly Chinese factories. These nets need to be dipped into a chemical that preserves them, a hulking vat that Eldon Cheramie oversees behind the building.

The massive shop, formerly a supermarket, is lined with benches, and just about every surface is covered with spools of plastic and nylon fiber and bright teal nets of varying shapes and sizes. Bins of fasteners and TEDs—the “turtle excluder devices” required in each net—line one wall. A bundle of five-foot-long zippers sits ready to be sewn into the bigger nets, making it easier for the fisherman to release their catch.

The business has changed mightily over the years, said Terrebonne, who now services only one big shrimping boat. “If we depended on the fishermen, we couldn’t make it. Shrimp cost less than they did thirty years ago, but everything else, fuel, materials, ice, nets, that’s all gone up.” In recent years, with an increase of cheap imported seafood from places like Vietnam and China, the cost of operating a big boat offshore for weeks is no longer offset by the price of the catch. This has combined with the significant tolls that pollution, wetland loss, and disasters like hurricanes or the BP Oil Spill have wrought on the Louisiana seafood industry, which—though still the nation’s second-largest seafood supplier—has been in survival mode for the past several years.

[Read another article by Beth D'Addonno about Crawfish Haven, a B&B in Southwest Louisiana, here.]

Though he still famously handmakes shrimp nets, Terrebonne’s main business now is in what he calls “gorilla nets,” which he started making in 1989 to keep his business afloat. These are used in the oilfield to drag the ocean floor for debris after a platform is decommissioned and pulled out of production. “They have to be sure they leave the bottom clean,” he said. “That’s what keeps us open.  First, they pull the big heavy net to pick up the heavy stuff, then they pull a regular net to verify that the bottom is clean enough for shrimping.”

Made with strong nylon fiber, the heavily cabled nets are massive. “When we started making them we took one of the first ones out and stretched it to test how strong it was,” recalled employee Gerald Griffin. “We put the boss’s wife’s car and my forklift in it and it was like nothing. They say it can’t break, but anything that gets stretched out, can still break.” Chine’s business is about fifty percent new production and fifty percent repair work.

Cheramie works almost exclusively on the 2300-pound gorilla nets out back, behind the shop. A trained mechanic, he said he got burnt out dealing with the public all the time and came to work for the net shop in 1992, preferring his current “office” with its soundtrack of chirping birds and focus on solitary, honest labor. “I keep everything running and going, I don’t have to do just one thing.” When I visited, twenty-seven new gorilla nets sat in the newly-repaired warehouse next door.

“We are a dying breed,” said Terrebonne, who has callouses on his hands from a lifetime of stitching. His father was a net maker, and so was his grandfather. He had a son who learned the trade, but he passed away a few years ago. “My other son is a welder, makes more money,” he said.

[Watch a video about two duck decoy carvers in South Louisiana and read their story here.]

The work is tedious, after all, completely done by hand with long pointed plastic needles threaded from the top. Terrebonne is precise, and adept at tapering the nets so they aren’t too bulky. “Not everybody knows how to do that,” said Griffin, who also started going out on shrimp boats and sewing nets when he was a child.

“We are a dying breed,” said Terrebonne

A dying breed indeed, practicing an art that our increasingly fast-paced world has little room—or, more significantly, money—for. When Terrebonne and his team go, it’s likely that one of the last facets of our commercial fishing industry’s roots will go, at least in Golden Meadow, too. “It’s sad, really,” said Terrebonne. But for now, at least, the Chine’s team carries on, and invites the public to share in their work. Before the pandemic, tour groups regularly stopped at the shop, which is open 5 am to 5 pm,  to see net making demonstrations and leave with a hand-stitched mini-net perfect for boiling shrimp or crawfish. They’ve started inviting visitors again, and small groups are scheduling demonstrations through the local Cajun Bayou tourism office.

“We welcome visitors—stop by anytime,” said Terrebonne. 

Schedule a net-weaving demo at Chine’s via lacajunbayou.com or by calling (985) 475-6788.

Chine’s Cajun Net Shop

1901 North Bayou Drive

Golden Meadow, LA 70357