New report spotlights Fisheries of the United States

Commercial fishermen in the US landed 9.7 billion pounds of seafood in 2015.

And even though the catch was up by 232 million pounds, the value of the catch was down.

US Commercial seafood landings were valued at 5.7 billion dollars in 2015 – about a quarter of billion dollars less than the year before. 

And even though Florida is one of the biggest fishing states in the country, we didn’t even make the top ten list of top seafood ports in the US in 2015. 

Commercial fishermen unloaded the most fish and shellfish the port of Dutch Harbor, in Alaska, making it the country's top port for landings for the 18th year in a row. 

Dutch Harbor fishermen landed 787 million pounds of seafood last year, up from 762 million pounds in 2014.

More than half of the seafood Americans eat from U.S. waters is caught in Alaska.

For the 15th consecutive year, New Bedford, Mass. had the highest valued catch, due mostly to the sea scallop fishery.

27.5 million pounds of oysters were harvested in US waters last year valued at just over $213 million dollars. 

That’s a decrease of about 7 million pounds and $36 million dollars compared with 2014.

Over half of all oysters harvested in the US came from the Gulf of Mexico.

U.S. landings of shrimp were 327 million pounds valued at nearly $489 million dollars.

Nearly 70 percent of the national total came from the Gulf region.

All of the information and much more, is available in the newly released report, Fisheries of the United States 2015.

We’ve posted a link to the full report on this story at oysterradio.com and on the Oyster Radio facebook page.

http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/Assets/commercial/fus/fus15/documents/01_Front2015.pdf

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