'Big shrimping family' in Florida left homeless by Hurricane Ian
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[October 07, 2022]
By Rod Nickel
FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Ricky
Moran, a shrimper who worked and slept on the boat he captained out of
Fort Myers Beach, lost both a secure livelihood and a safe 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 like it was a
toy and left it in a twisted heap on shore along with a half dozen other
battered boats, most flipped on their sides or with the hulls facing the
sky. Moran now finds himself without a safe place to live or a means to
make a living.
It is a plight shared by dozens of others who work on trawlers that ply
the warm Gulf waters off southwest Florida in search of shrimp, an
important 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 more than 100
people in Florida and caused tens of billions of dollars in property
damage.
Southwest Florida is the center of the state's pink shrimp industry.
Trawlers off Fort Myers Beach and other port towns in the area trap the
crustaceans in nets for sale to restaurants, grocery chains and directly
to consumers.
Trawlers from Lee County, which includes Fort Myers Beach, harvested 3.9
million pounds of pink shrimp worth $12.5 million in 2021, or 43% of the
state's total catch, according to 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 worker had half a finger chopped
off when wind slammed a door shut.
The 150 mph winds and huge storm surge quickly swept trawlers over the
dock, where they crashed into each other.
Luckily, Moran said, all the Fort Myers Beach shrimp workers he knows
survived.
A week after Ian, Moran was still sleeping on his damaged boat. Every
morning since the storm, he scrambles over the wreckage and crawls
through an opening between two other vessels to commiserate with fellow
shrimp workers at the marina.
About 60 of them are living on their damaged boats or in tents, without
toilets and showers, and scrounging for food and water.
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Shrimpers, who are living in tents and
damaged boats after Hurricane Ian struck last week, gather outside a
seafood market in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, U.S., October 5, 2022.
REUTERS/Rod Nickel
Sherwin Beters, 40, from Guyana in South America, worries that he
does not qualify for government help, since he is in the United
States on a work visa. About 20 other Guyanese shrimpers are stuck
in the same situation in Fort Myers Beach, he said.
"Sleeping on the boat is a chance we are taking because all the
boats could topple on one another any time now, they could flip,"
Beters said.
In good times, shrimpers work on a short-term basis, with a captain
and two rig workers splitting a share of the revenue from the boat,
usually owned by a company, Moran said. He planned to head for
Mobile, Alabama - another center for Gulf shrimping - hoping to find
work there.
'BIG SHRIMPING FAMILY'
Two companies, Erickson & Jensen Seafood and Trico Shrimp Co, own
most of the boats at Fort Myers Beach, employing some 300 people,
said Anna Erickson, whose family owns part of Erickson & Jensen.
Only three of her company’s 11 boats are still afloat.
"We’re a big shrimping family," Erickson, 36, said. "These people
are lifers. This is really a tragedy."
It will take "a whole lot of money" to repair the dock and put the
boats back on the water, she said.
Many of the boats, some of which are 60 feet long, were uninsured
because premiums are unaffordable, said Joel Andrews, 66, part of
the Jensen family that partly owns Erickson & Jensen.
Michele Bryant, 58, who cooks and picks shrimp on the boats, was
sleeping outdoors in the marina until finding a tent this week. She
doesn’t want to check into a shelter because her belongings are
still on a boat.
"Most people have homes," she said. "We don’t have homes. We live on
the boats."
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Fort Myers Beach; additional reporting
by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Diane Craft)
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