Fisheries of the United States details commercial and recreational fishing activities in 2012

Commercial fishermen in the US landed 9.6 billion pounds of seafood in 2012.

Their catch was valued at 5.1 billion dollars – about 200 million 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 2012.

Commercial fishermen unloaded the most fish and shellfish the port of Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, in Alaska, making it the country's top port for landings for the 16th year in a row.

Dutch Harbor fishermen landed 752 million pounds of seafood last year, up from 706 million pounds in 2011.

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

For the 13th consecutive year, New Bedford, Mass. had the highest valued catch, due mostly to the sea scallop fishery.

33.1 million pounds of oysters were harvested in US waters last year valued at just over $155 million dollars.

That’s an increase of 4.6 million pounds and $23.5 million dollars compared with 2011.

Almost 62 percent of the oysters came from the Gulf Coast.

U.S. landings of shrimp were 297.2 million pounds valued at nearly $484.9 milliondollars.

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 2012.

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/commercial-fisheries/fus/fus12/index

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