had c:>r{r;oes of 120 barrels each. The socrot of the new grounds bocaino 

 coinmon Imovrledgc, and a large munber of fisheriiien started maJcing the 

 trip across the Gulf to new fishinc grounds. 



The discovery and development of the Carnpoche fishery was at 

 first entirely a Texas operation. The first Florida-based fishermen 

 apparently arrived on the grounds during January 1951 but by April 1951 

 the majority of the boats were based in Florida, However, sorae of the 

 boats fishing the grounds were transients from New England. A record 

 breaking run of brovm shrimp during the fall of 1951 kept most Texas 

 fishermen away from Campeche Bank, and the Florida fishermen have pro- 

 duced over 90 percent of the shrimp from the banks since that time, 



Campeche catches fell off sharply in 195U, It is not knoim, 

 whether this decline is an indication of decreased abundance of pink 

 shrimp since brown and white shrimp are included in the catches of the 

 Florida boats fishing the Campeche waters. 



Recent infonmation on the status of explorations in the Gulf 

 of Mexico is available from the publications of Hildebrand previously 

 cited as vrall as from the cruise reports of the "Oregon", the exploratory 

 vessel of the Bureau of Cormnarcial Fisheries of the United States Fish 

 and Wildlife Service, From the above sources the following observations 

 have been excerpted, 



VJhite Shri mp 2/ 



Although white shrimp have been recorded in water as deep as 

 k3 fathoms off Loiiisiana, commercial trawling is concentrated 

 inside 20 fathoms; the bulk of the catch is made inside lU fathoms. 

 There are seasonal variations in the depths where white slirimp occur and 

 the tagging of shrimp has shown that in Louisiana they move offshore in 

 the •winter. There are indications that the species is restricted to a 

 narrower vertical range on the south Texas coast and off Tamaulipas than 

 in Louisiana. 



Production varies greatly from year to year and seasonally! 

 often most of the shiimp are caught in very small areas. There are 

 indications that the catch of this species shows a long-terra tendency to 

 decline in some areas* The 195l State of Texas landings of white slirimp, 

 for instance, ware only about 30 percent of the 19l43 landings. 



The largest single fishing ground for vriiite shriiip is the 

 territory from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Freeport, Texas, 



2/ Source: Hildebrand, H. H,, Fauna of the Brovm Shrimia Grounds in the 

 Woster'n Gulf , Institute of Marine Science, The University of 

 Texas, Port Aransas, Texas, November 195U, v. III, No, 2, 

 p. 21;0. 



22 



