Fishing it is banned most of the year. Meanwhile, imports from Mexico and other countries that have no similar restrictions have come to dominate the market and have driven down the price, which has dropped as much as 27 percent since the 1980s. Snapper fisherman Ron Anderson, also of Golden Meadow, has seen his crew of three reduced to one. His son went to work at a shrimp shack, and another regular crew member found a construction job at a local Wal-Mart. These days Anderson sometimes gets help from his wife and grandson.
Oysters also face a crunch.
Encroaching communities and the pollution that came with them have squeezed oyster beds from the north, while coastal erosion has closed in from the south. Last fall oystermen staged protests demanding higher dockside prices. The changes of the past two decades took one of the last unregulated areas of American life and put a fence around it, making it another zone overseen by government agents, analysts and bureaucrats. Once it became apparent that the limits of many fish species could be overrun so easily, governments established hundreds of regulations - quotas, trip limits, bag limits, size limits, license limits, area closures, gear restrictions and seasonal closures. This mishmash of rules has yet to restore many fish populations.