Graham, Texas Sea Grant Help Revolutionize Shrimping Industry
Graham, surrounded by a group of commercial fisherman, discusses the proper placement and installation of a turtle excluder device. Photo courtesy of Texas Sea Grant.
For more than 40 years, Gary Graham, Texas Sea Grant College Program’s Fisheries Specialist, has worked with commercial fishermen across the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic states, usually one-on-one at a dock or aboard a boat, to help them adopt the newest gear, comply with the most recent regulations or navigate the latest contentious issue.
He was instrumental in helping shrimpers find, test and install turtle excluder and bycatch reduction devices (TEDs and BRDs) that did their respective jobs the most efficiently while allowing the smallest amount of shrimp loss. More recently, Graham’s research into more hydrodynamic fishing gear has helped Texas shrimpers save 2.4 million gallons of fuel, valued at $5.7million, in 2010 alone. During the past three years, the Texas shrimp fleet saved about 7.3 million gallons of fuel valued at $17.7 million, and it realized additional savings through the less frequent need to change oil or complete major engine overhauls. Had this gear not been utilized, many vessels would have been parked at the docks because they would have been too expensive to operate, costing about 200 people their jobs.
Throughout his career, Graham has set the example of the type of caring, committed service to Texans that is now the hallmark of Texas Sea Grant’s (TXSG) Extension Program — a quality that cannot be cultivated sitting behind a desk.
“I spend a lot of time in the field,” Graham said. “I like that. My office is the road. After 41 years, I still get excited about the people I work with.”
Graham’s reputation and expertise has earned him as much respect in academia as it has in the commercial fishing industry. As far as anyone can determine, he is the only full professor (Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences) in the Texas A&M University System who holds just a bachelor’s degree. Although he’s semi-retired and officially works just 50 percent time, he continues to be one of the busiest people at TXSG.
As 2011 was coming to a close, Graham found himself on the road again, this time to ensure that shrimpers along the Gulf coast continue using TEDs as prescribed by federal law. A TED is essentially a metal grate installed at an angle in a shrimp net to prevent sea turtles from being caught and possibly killed. The space between the bars of the grate allows shrimp to pass through the TED and into the back of the net. Turtles are too large to fit between the bars. When they contact the bars, the angle of the TED helps direct the turtles in the direction of an escape flap in the net.
Shrimpers were adamantly opposed to TEDs in the early 1980s, when the federal government first mandated them, because they were seen as just a hole in the net where shrimp could escape. Graham knew that the shrimping industry was going to be forced to install the devices and unless shrimpers participated in the process, they would also be forced to use whatever gear the government selected.
He partnered with late Georgia Sea Grant specialist Dave Harrington and several cooperating shrimpers to test not only the best design for a TED, but also the best place within a net to put it. In the end, the group modified equipment that was already used by shrimpers to exclude jellyfish.
“That modification is used today,” Graham said proudly. “Cooperation with TEDs has to be collaboration; it has to be an exchange.”
Graham, right, won a TPWD Law Enforcement Division Director's Award in 2011 for creating and teaching workshops like the one avobe, which he held in conjunction with Texas Parks and Wildlife. Photo courtesy of Texas Sea Grant.
Graham used his collaborative cooperation model again as the specter of federally mandated BRDs arose. BRDs are similar to TEDs, but they are designed to decrease the amount of sea life other than shrimp — the fish and other species collectively known as “unintended catch” — that wind up in shrimp nets.
“We’d hold a workshop on TEDs or BRDs or something else, but then each shrimper would ask you to look at his gear,” Graham said. “I’ve found the less efficient but most effective way to get things done is to be on the waterfront one-on-one.”
Time has proven that Graham’s approach works. In 1990, he was a member of a National Academy of Sciences committee that found just 740 Kemp’s ridley sea turtle nests at their main nesting beach at Rancho Nuevo, Mexico. At an average of just over three nests dug per turtle, that meant about 250 females had come ashore to lay eggs. Graham found himself wondering at that time if the turtles had a large enough gene pool remaining to ensure survival of the species.
“This year, 9,000 turtles were sighted in the same area in one day,” Graham said. “That’s what keeps me going. Thank God I lived to see that recovery taking place, to see a species on the brink of extinction and to rebound.”
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Media contact: Jim Hiney, Communications Coordinator, Texas Sea Grant, at (979) 862-3773
