FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) – Ricky Moran, a shrimper who worked and slept on the boat he captained out of Fort Myers Beach, lost each a secure livelihood and a protected place to live when Hurricane Ian roared into southwest Florida and smashed the trawler he calls home.
The Category 4 storm lifted the craft from its moorings prefer it was a toy and left it in a twisted heap on shore together with a half dozen other battered boats, most flipped on their sides or with the hulls facing the sky. Moran now finds himself with no protected place to live or a way to make a living.
It’s a plight shared by dozens of others who work on trawlers that ply the nice and cozy Gulf waters off southwest Florida in quest of shrimp, a crucial industry in a region known largely for tourism.
“This ain’t my first rodeo but I ain’t never seen anything like this in my life. I never seen shrimp boats tossed like this,” he said, gesturing at a tangle of damaged boats left by Ian, which killed greater than 100 people in Florida and caused tens of billions of dollars in property damage.
Southwest Florida is the middle of the state’s pink shrimp industry. Trawlers off Fort Myers Beach and other port towns in the realm trap the crustaceans in nets on the market to restaurants, grocery chains and on to consumers.
Trawlers from Lee County, which incorporates Fort Myers Beach, harvested 3.9 million kilos of pink shrimp value $12.5 million in 2021, or 43% of the state’s total catch, based on Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Moran said he stayed on board his boat through the storm, spending a harrowing night, during which a fellow employee had half a finger chopped off when wind slammed a door shut.
The 150 mph winds and big storm surge quickly swept trawlers over the dock, where they crashed into one another.
Luckily, Moran said, all of the Fort Myers Beach shrimp staff he knows survived.
Every week after Ian, Moran was still sleeping on his damaged boat. Every morning because the storm, he scrambles over the wreckage and crawls through a gap between two other vessels to commiserate with fellow shrimp staff on the marina.
About 60 of them live on their damaged boats or in tents, without toilets and showers, and scrounging for food and water.
Sherwin Beters, 40, from Guyana in South America, worries that he doesn’t qualify for presidency help, since he’s in america on a piece visa. About 20 other Guyanese shrimpers are stuck in the identical situation in Fort Myers Beach, he said.
“Sleeping on the boat is a likelihood we’re taking because all of the boats could topple on each other any time now, they may flip,” Beters said.
In good times, shrimpers work on a short-term basis, with a captain and two rig staff splitting a share of the revenue from the boat, normally owned by an organization, Moran said. He planned to move for Mobile, Alabama – one other center for Gulf shrimping – hoping to seek out work there.
Two firms, Erickson & Jensen Seafood and Trico Shrimp Co, own many of the boats at Fort Myers Beach, employing some 300 people, said Anna Erickson, whose family owns a part of Erickson & Jensen. Only three of her company’s 11 boats are still afloat.
“We’re an enormous shrimping family,” Erickson, 36, said. “These individuals are lifers. This is basically a tragedy.”
It’s going to take “a complete lot of cash” to repair the dock and put the boats back on the water, she said.
Lots of the boats, a few of that are 60 feet long, were uninsured because premiums are unaffordable, said Joel Andrews, 66, a part of the Jensen family that partly owns Erickson & Jensen.
Michele Bryant, 58, who cooks and picks shrimp on the boats, was sleeping outdoors within the marina until finding a tent this week. She doesn’t want to envision right into a shelter because her belongings are still on a ship.
“Most individuals have homes,” she said. “We don’t have homes. We continue to exist the boats.”
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Fort Myers Beach; additional reporting by Wealthy McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Diane Craft)
Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.
