Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (50714)	1/22/2006 9:10:21 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

ForresT Gump got rich when all his shrimp boat buddies were wiped out during the hurricane and he bought them up for pennies eh? Features: AGRICULTURE In July, after Hurricane Dennis slammed into Florida’s oystering communities along Apalachicola Bay, real estate speculators snapped up nine demolished seafood packinghouses along U.S. Highway 98 in Eastpoint. floridatrend.com SEAFOOD SLAM: "That's my life you're looking at," says Eastpoint oysterman and shrimper Eugene Webb. While many in the seafood business are selling out to developers after being hammered by a series of hurricanes, a flood of imports and a nasty case of red tide, Webb hopes to rebuild. In July, after Hurricane Dennis slammed into Florida’s oystering communities along Apalachicola Bay, real estate speculators snapped up nine demolished seafood packinghouses along U.S. Highway 98 in Eastpoint. Longtime fishing families in the region say they were besieged by developers and lawyers ready to buy from hurricane-weary watermen. The specter of condominiums, shops and fancy boat slips in two of Florida’s last authentic fishing villages, Eastpoint and nearby Apalachicola, illustrates a seafood industry in the sort of crisis it has not seen since Florida’s voters passed a constitutional amendment to ban marine net fishing in state waters in 1994. The state’s shrimp industry already was in a slump because of cheap foreign imports flooding the U.S. market. Foreign companies have captured 88% of the total U.S. market for shrimp, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. The widespread red tides of 2005 had weakened the industry, shuttering oyster and clam harvesting for weeks at a time. Rising fuel prices were another punch. The hurricanes dealt the final blow. In north Florida, Dennis flattened tin-roofed packinghouses and spoiled thousands of pounds of fresh seafood. In south Florida, Wilma flooded fish houses, destroyed boats and washed away more than half a million stone-crab traps at peak season, as well as up to 200,000 spiny lobster traps. “We really are in survival mode,” says Bob Jones, executive director of the Southeastern Fisheries Association. “Whoever can get through this year and next year will be the toughest in the industry. If they can make it through these two years, than they’ll be in business as long as they want to be.”