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(6) Shrimp 
The single crop of greatest value to United States flag fishing vessels is shrimp. 
In 1967 this yielded United States fishermen a little more than $100 million at 
dockside (nearly a fifth of their total income). 
In 1948 the total supply of shrimp to the United States in terms of heads-off 
weight, was 121 million pounds; in 1957—191 million pounds—and in 1967—395 
million pounds, which is the equivalent of about 600 million pounds round weight. 
The United States market for shrimp continues to increase at a fairly steady 
rate, which is greater than the rate of population increase, and there is every 
reason to believe that this will continue for the foreseeable future. 
It needs to be kept in mind that there are two main kinds of shrimp presently 
sold in the United States, the Penaeid and the Pandalid shrimp. 
Most of the market has been built on Penaeid shrimp, which come from the 
lower latitudes (tropics and sub-tropics around the world). These form the 
predominant part of United States caught shrimp (chiefly from the Gulf of 
Mexico, Southeast Atlantic States and Caribbean area). There are not enough 
resources of this sort of shrimp in United States coastal waters to much more 
than half fill the present United States market. Accordingly United States proc- 
essors have stimulated fisheries for this kind of shrimp all around the world to 
provide raw material for their markets here, and they are still doing so. Re- 
sources of this sort in coastal United States waters are producing about at maxi- 
mum sustainable yield level (which varies a good deal from year to year, de- 
pending upon environmental changes). 
On the other hand the underutilized resources of Pandalid shrimp in coastal 
United States waters are very large. The best present estimate is that this 
resource off Alaska alone will eventually produce about as much Pandalid shrimp 
as the Gulf of Mexico produces Penaeid shrimp when the fishery there is fully 
developed. This sort of shrimp also occurs in commercial volume as far south as 
Northern California on the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Maine on the Atlantic 
coast. 
Mature Pandalid shrimp on average are much smaller than Penaeid shrimp and 
they do not occupy quite the same market in the United States. In fact it is 
questionable that the growing market for Pandalid shrimp is even very strongly 
competitive with that for Penaecid shrimp. The chief thing that has held back the 
production and sale of the small Pandalid shrimp has been the technology of 
peeling them economically and preparing them for market. This problem is now 
in the process of solution and their catch is going up sharply on the Pacific 
coast (chiefly Alaska). Production was 15 million pounds as recently as 1964, 
and 59 million pounds in 1967. It is estimated that this will continue to grow quite 
rapidly as least to the 300 million pound per year level. 
The total United States flag catch of all kinds of shrimp, while varying from 
year to year, has increased slowly over the years. The increase in supply for the 
past twenty years has come chiefly, however, from imports. These yielded 18% 
of the total supply in 1951, 36% in 1957, and 51% in 1967 (having been 57% in 
1966, but reduced in 1967 by the extraordinarily large crop of Penaeid shrimp 
that year in the Gulf of Mexico plus the sharply growing Pandalid production in 
Alaska). 
The United States now imports shrimp from upwards of fifty countries, of 
which Mexico is the most important supplier. In many of these countries the 
product is from fisheries established by United States firms, sometimes as wholly 
owned subsidiaries using in some cases U.S. flag vessels with U.S. skippers, some- 
times as joint ventures with local entrepreneurs, sometimes foreign owned ven- 
tures supported by U.S. private industry loan capital, and sometimes wholly 
foreign ventures stimulated only by guaranteed markets in the United States. 
The value of shrimp imports to the United States in 1967 was more than $150 
million, or somewhat more than a fifth the total value of all fishery imports. 
(c) Tuna 
Substantially all tuna used in the United States is used in the canned form. It 
provides much the largest volume and value of canned sea food used in the 
United States. United States canned tuna production in 1967 was about 20 
million standard cases, or about half the total canned fishery products produced 
in the United States. The canned weight of the total supply of tuna to the United 
States was 454 million pounds, of which 14.4% was canned imports and the rest 
canned in the United States. The wholesale value of the canned tuna supply in 
1967 was above $350 million or about 12% of the total value of fishery products 
at the wholesale level in that year. 
