officially established dixring February 19ii8. The first carload of brown 

 shrimp was shipped to San Francisco during August I?!;?* They were care- 

 fully graded to uniform size and shipped at cost to develop the market. 

 Most of the brown shrimp that were sold the first year were handled 

 through this brokerage arrangement and the cooperative. After the first 

 six months the market was strong enough to handle all the brown shrimp 

 produced by members of the cooperative. 



Almost ninety percent of the production of brown shrimp during 

 19li7 and 19U8 was caught along the Texas coast with the greatest produc- 

 tion at Aransas Pass. The rich shrimp beds which Hildebrand calls the 

 "2ii-10" grounds, although discovered during 19li7, did not figvire prom- 

 inently in the brown shrimp catch until 19U9 when they dominated the 

 catch. 



Bro^m shrimp production developed somewhat later off Mississippi, 

 Alabama, and Louisiana because the owners of the large trawlers did not 

 find brovm shrimp as abundant as on the "2li-10" grounds. However, the 

 shrimping grounds offshore were well-knoim to many of the fishermen. 

 The offshore fishery developed during June 1950, when large trawlers from 

 the Texas fleet brought the first sizable landings into Alabama ports. 



The last ma^^jor discovery of a commercial broim shrimp ground 

 was the Obregon grounds. Commercially valuable concentrations were ap- 

 parently exploited for the first time during the full moon of April 195i* 

 For several months afterwards the boats would leave Campeche for Obregon 

 to fish for brovm shrimp during the full moon. However, fishing pressure 

 became so great in the Gulf of Car.ipeche that fishermen informed Mr. 

 Hildebrand that it soon became difficult to prove that fishing was any 

 better during one phase of the moon than another. 



After the discovery of the Obregon (brown shrimp) grounds, the 

 development of small "pockets" in the area betvjeen Pvuita Jerez and 

 Alvarado, Mexico, began. The largest area of trawlable bottom was found 

 in the region around Lobos Island. Still later the fishermen actively 

 exploited and exploited fisning grounds off Galveston and Freeport. During 

 the winter of 1951^-55 many fishermen were operating in depths of 30 to 50 

 fathoms off Freeport and Galveston, 



Pinlc shrimp Penaeus duorarum were first described by Burkenroad 

 (1939). He gave the range as extending from Gape Hatteras, North Carolina 

 to Key Largo, Florida on the Atlantic coast. Nearly all his records from 

 the Gulf of Mexico were from the west coast of Florida. He lists only 

 Vera Cruz in the western Gulf. Although the details of its distribution 

 in the Gulf of Mexico are not yet known, pinJc shrimp have not been reported 

 authoritatively between the mouth of the Mississippi and the meridian of 

 Galveston, and very little was known about their distribution along the 

 east coast of Mexicci. 



Biirkenroadl (19li9) described a 10-year old fishery between Core 

 Sound and Beaufort I'nlet in North Carolina. Here seventy channel nets 



20 



