Dried shrimp

Transcription

Louisiana and shrimp are synonymous. When consumers today think of Louisiana shrimp, a fresh or quality frozen product comes to mind. But a century or more ago, before flash freezing, interstate highways and airfreight, Louisiana shrimp meant dry shrimp. It's high in protein. It tastes good and it travels well. In fact, Louisiana dried shrimp was shipped throughout the United States and exported to far-flung corners of the world like South America and China. You can still find Louisiana dried shrimp selling for as much as twenty-eight dollars a pound in San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver. Louis Blum is co-owner of Blum & Bergeron Incorporated in Houma. The company, started by his grandfather, has been selling dried shrimp locally, nationally and overseas since the early twentieth century. Dried shrimp was a way to preserve the shrimp for years and months and God knows how long a dried shrimp will last. It's supposed to be the safest product in the world as far a biologist at LSU told me at one time. It has no harmful oils or resins or anything in it that could get rancid or anything like that. So it stays just almost forever. When we first started, as I understand it, the first international shipment of seafood from the United States anywhere to the imported countries, was my grandfather's business that he sent to China back in the early 1900's, as far as the seafood was concerned. Before WWII, I'm assuming that probably most of the shrimp that my grandfather sent out of here went overseas, because it was very inexpensive. During the Depression, especially, we didn't have any money here. And China, they were on the gold standard. Their money was good and ours wasn't. So, we had a good product to sell to China. Plus it was preserved and it never went bad. So they could use it any time, any time they wanted. I'm assuming that probably most of the shrimp prior to WWII went overseas. It either went to South America, Cuba, China or Hawaii In the early days of Louisiana's dried shrimp industry, seafood was boiled in seawater and placed in the open air to sun dry. As demand for the product grew so did the size and number of drying platforms. Once upon a time, hundreds of drying platforms were scattered along the state's coast, bayous, and throughout marshes. Houston Foret of Chauvin, a shrimper and dried shrimp processor. Well they started on a small-scale but then they got to a point that some of these platforms, like the ones we were talking about, was probably about 20,000 square feet. I mean you huge things. They could go over there and put... They wouldn't go over there by the pound, they would go over by the pier down there and everything And some of these platforms would hold about 2,000 tubs of shrimp, now that's a 105 lbs, you know. That is some serious shrimp back then And some of those platforms were maybe a football or two football fields big. And they made villages around them. And people lived out on those platforms. And they would catch oysters and they would catch shrimp and they would trap furs and they would make their lives out there on those platforms. For Norris Price Sr. of Chauvin, as well as many other processors, shrimp drying became a family affair. Small communities grew up around the platforms so wives could be with their husbands and children with their fathers during the weeks and months the platforms were operating. In the case of the Price family, shrimp was in their blood. As Norris Sr. and his two now middle-aged sons run Price Seafood. Them platforms had seventy camps around them and people would live in them. The whole family. When the schools closed, I'd bring my whole family. And then vacation, they'd have the vacation around Christmas time, Around Thanksgiving, you know. I'd come pick up my family and bring them up. By the middle of the 20th century, the platforms began to disappear. Drying shrimp indoors with forced air heaters was more efficient, reducing drying times by sixty percent or more. Drying machines also eliminated the spoilage platform operators experience on overcast or rainy days. The industry changed around, I would think, around 1962, '63. The price of shrimp doubled. In fact, it actually tripled. But when the price of shrimp got up to over a dollar, a dollar fifty a pound, they couldn't afford to throw it away anymore. So my dad, in about 1948 or so, like that, he came from New Orleans after working for Higgins Industries in New Orleans. Came and helped my grandfather in the shrimp industry. He took an old heater out the bathroom and made himself a drying machine. He was drying shrimp in an artificial drying machine here in the shop for about 15 -- 20 years. And after that, he had developed a method of doing it and knew what he needed to do. He had all the tests run on it and found out it was even better than the sun-dried shrimp. So in about 1962 or '63, when the price tripled, those people said, we don't know what to do. We going to have to really be careful about how we're drying shrimp. And so my dad says, well I've got an idea. He said, I got a drying machine that I've been drying shrimp with, he says. Why don't I come down there and put a drying machine in each one of the platforms and y'all can try it out and see how y'all like it. They would pour the boiled shrimp on top of that screen. The air would be forced through the shrimp and it would dry it. Anywhere from four to six hours, depending on time of year it was and how much humidity or rain or whatever was going on, it could dry a batch of shrimp. So as time went on, the Board of Health would come. They'd say, we can't have y'all drying shrimp on platforms like that anymore. The birds are coming and dropping their stuff on it. The nutria and the raccoons are coming up here and eating the shrimp and everything like that. And it's not sanitary. Eventually, with the new laws and new safety regulations, they all started using drying machines. More changes are now taking hold in the shrimp drying industry. Blum & Bergeron continues to ship shrimp across the country and around the globe. But there are fewer processors supplying Louis Blum. Shrimp drying is a hard, labor intensive business the doesn't attract younger generations. And the price of fuel and competition from imports have driven many shrimpers out of fishing. But some continue to persevere such as Sandra Bouqet of Bouquet Seafood in Chauvin. Over the years the numbers have, I guess you can say, gone down Used to have the old shrimpers, old trawlers, and people who used to chase seabobs in the wintertime. That generation's either retired or died. Most of the shrimpers, like the ones who just wasn't really into it, I guess, and couldn't make ends meet, have gone on jobs. The majority of our shrimpers here right now are Vietnamese. It's like a complete turnaround. I want to say like three quarters of our shrimpers are Vietnamese right now. And if it wouldn't be for them, we could probably shut the place down, because it wouldn't be enough to keep going. From the way when we started, it's just completely changed.