FORT MYERS BEACH, FL- Local shrimpers are losing a big catch.
Today's the first day of the spring shrimping season in the Louisiana area, and typically shrimpers would soon head north.
This year, they have to stay away.
 
At the Trico Shrimp Company on Fort Myers Beach, workers are busy unloading what would normally be the last of the local harvest before heading north.

Owner of Erickson & Jenson Seafood Company Grant Erickson says, "We go to where the shrimp are the thickest and usually the shrimp are thickest in the Louisiana area."

With fisheries closing due to the oil spill, many boats won't be making that trip this year.

Erickson says, "It's taking the middle part of the Gulf of Mexico out of the scenerio for me."

Erickson predicts his boats will be among the crowd now shrimping in the Dry Tortugas.

"I imagine if the people are not helping clean up that spill over there, they're looking for other fishing grounds."

That means more boats in one area competing for less shrimp.
Trico Shrimp Company co-owner Dennis Henderson says it's better than nothing.

Henderson says, "I don't sleep too good at night, I own twenty of those boats out there, and we need to catch shrimp."

He says he would like to see the Texas shrimping season which starts in July, begin sooner this year, before that area is shut down too.

Henderson says, "I'm looking at maybe having to shut down the fleet, if we don't have any place to drag, we won't have any place to work."