Table 4. 



-Size by season of commercial species of fish and crustaceans in Old Tampa Bat/ — Area III, December 



1961-November 1962 



•From Springer and Woodburn (1960). 



adults in Gulf of Mexico commercial fisheries and 

 Tampa Bay sport fisheries. Few constitute im- 

 portant commercial fisheries in Tampa Bay. The 

 significance of the estuary lies more in the growth 

 of species for later harvest in Gulf fisheries than 

 in catches of adults in nursery areas. 



Shrimp comprise the most valuable fishery in the 

 Gulf of Mexico (Power, 1962b). Commercial 

 catches consist primarily of three species: the 

 brown shrimp, Penaeus aztecus; the white shrimp, 

 P. setiferus; and the pink shrimp, P. duorarum 

 (Kutkuhn, 1962). Young of several species in 

 developmental stages have been found in Tampa 

 Bay (Eldred, Ingle, Woodburn, Button, and Jones, 

 1961) — the penaeid shrimp, Trachypeneus con- 



strictus and P. duorarum, and the rock shrimp, 

 Sicyonia laeingata and S. typica. These and one 

 additional penaeid species, Trachypeneus similis, 

 were identified in our collections (Saloman, 1964). 

 The important Gulf shrimp collected in Tampa 

 Bay was P. duorarum. It is estimated that 75 

 percent of the shrimp brought to dock in the three- 

 county area surrounding Tampa Bay are P. 

 duorarum and 25 percent P. setiferus. Ninety- 

 eight percent of the total is actually caught on 

 the Campeche grounds (personal communica- 

 tion, Robert Benton — Bureau of Commercial 

 Fisheries Biological Laboratory, Galveston, Texas). 

 In Tampa Bay, P. duorarum is caught for a bait- 

 shrimp market only. During October 1961 



374 



U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



