![]() Today, the shrimping fleet here is down to fewer than a hundred boats. When she started her job decades ago, Port Isabel and the nearby Port of Brownsville had some 500 boats. She organizes the shrimp boat blessing every July at the beginning of the Texas summer shrimp season. "This is probably the worst year we've ever seen," says Ida Rivera, who has worked as a bookkeeper for a local shrimping company for more than 40 years. ![]() Gulf shrimpers are facing a perfect storm of expensive diesel fuel, an acute shortage of workers and a flood of cheap imported shrimp. Shrimp remains America's favorite seafood, yet the rugged livelihood of catching shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico is a dying industry. The annual blessing of the shrimp fleet is overshadowed this year by the painful reality that half of all the vessels getting a benediction will stay tied up. In the name of the Father, Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen." "Protect them from the dangers of wind and rain and all the perils of the deep. Jesse Garza of Our Lady, Star of the Sea Catholic Church. "Bless this fleet, their equipment, their crew, their captains," intones the Rev. ![]() PORT ISABEL, Texas - The skiff glides through the harbor as the Catholic priest squirts holy water from a plastic bottle onto the colorful hulls of the shrimp boats just off the southernmost tip of Texas. Half of the vessels will remain tied up during the summer shrimping season because, their owners say, the Gulf shrimping industry is near collapse. Jesse Garza blesses the shrimp fleet in Port Isabel, Texas, on July 12.
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