Trends toward decreasing size of brown shrimp, Penaeus aztecus, and white shrimp, Penaeus setiferus, in reported annual catches from Texas and Louisiana

An exponential model adequately characterized the size composition (expressed as a regression of transformed cumulative percentage of weight on size category) of reported annual catches of brown and white shrimp in Texas and Louisiana from 1959 to 1976. Louisiana catches contained considerably greater proportions of small shrimp than did Texas catches. For both species and the States, there was a significant trend toward small increase in proportion of small shrimp in the catches over the period.