Study of the Bay and Gulf Populations of Shrimp: Penaeus aztecus, Penaeus setiferus, and Penaeus duorarum

Abstract

During the 1962 study 894 shrimp samples were collected on the Texas coast from Galveston to the Lower Laguna Madre. These samples produced 42,745 brown shrimp and 18,072 white shrimp. Postlarval samples, collected with a plankton net, a pull seine, and a beam trawl at Aransas Pass, indicated two major groups of small shrimp entered Aransas and Corpus Christi Bays. The first wave entered the bays in February and March, and the second wave entered in October and November. Bay samples, collected with the standard trawls and seines, indicated at least three major waves each of brown and white entered most bays this year. Brown shrimp were found to grow at the rate of 0.8 millimeters per day leaving the bays at 80 millimeters mean size. White shrimp grew 1.1 millimeters per day moving Gulfward at 110 millimeters. Brown and white shrimp left the lower Laguna Madre at a smaller size than in other bays. Pink shrimp were stragglers in the more southerly bays, San Antonio Bay to the Lower Laguna Madre. They grew at the rate of 0.7 millimeters per day in the Lower Laguna moving Gulfward at 50 millimeters mean size. Gulf samples were collected in the Port Aransas Area at depths of 15 fathoms showed the brown shrimp to be present from March to November but were more abundant from July to September. The majority of the brown shrimp caught in the inshore Gulf were under legal count size about 118 mm. White shrimp were found year round in the collections but were more abundant during the winter and spring. White shrimp taken in the collections were legal count size all year except in February. Salinities were higher this year than in 1961. Temperatures followed the normal seasonal trend except for the freeze in January and a slight temperature drop in March. Commercial shrimp landings shows the total shrimp production increased one per cent from 1961 and decreased 28 per cent from the 1960 commercial production. Data collected this year further substantiates the need for closing certain shallow nursery areas to shrimping. There also appears to be a need for additional regulations of the inshore Gulf to protect the transit, undercount brown shrimp during the summer and fall.

Description

53 pages

Keywords

population dynamics, penaeid shrimp, pink shrimp, white shrimp, brown shrimp, Penaeus aztecus, Penaeus setiferus, Penaeus duorarum, brown shrimp, ecological distribution, juveniles, trawl nets, seine nets, life history, shrimp fisheries

Citation