Commercial fishermen in the US landed 9.9 billion pounds of seafood in 2017

Commercial fishermen in the US landed 9.9 billion pounds of seafood in 2017.

The catch was up by 344 million pounds from the year before; the value of the catch was also up.

US Commercial seafood landings were valued at 5.4 billion dollars in 2017 – about 110 million dollars more 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 2017. 

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 21st year in a row. 

Dutch Harbor fishermen landed 769 million pounds of seafood last year.

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

For the 18th consecutive year, New Bedford, Massachusetts had the highest valued catch, due mostly to the sea scallop fishery.

Overall, the highest value U.S. commercial species were salmon at $688 million dollars, followed by crabs, lobsters, shrimp, scallops and Alaska pollock. 

31.8 million pounds of oysters were harvested in US waters last year valued at just over $236 million dollars. 

That’s a decrease of about 1 and a half million pounds but the value of the oyster harvest increased by over 19 million dollars.

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

U.S. landings of shrimp were 283 million pounds valued at nearly $531 million dollars.

Nearly 77 percent of the national shrimp harvest came from the Gulf region.

All of the information and much more, is available in the newly released report, Fisheries of the United States 2017.

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

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/content/fisheries-united-states-2017

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