NEW ORLEANS — Shrimpers in Louisiana and Mississippi have had to deal with the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, an influx of fresh water during the Mississippi River’s flooding and a spike in fuel prices. They’re even being branded as turtle killers.

“We have a hard enough time surviving as it is without putting more on us,” said A.C. Cooper, a Plaquemines Parish shrimper and the vice president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association.

“Fuel prices high, shrimp prices down,” said Pete Gerica, a fisherman on Lake Pontchartrain. “I got better prices in the ‘70s.” He said small shrimp were selling for $1 to $1.40 a pound on the dock. 

To him, the shrimp caught this year were smaller than usual. He wondered if the oil spill hurt the usual food sources for shrimp. “The populations (of shrimp) were there, they just didn’t grow. The crabs were behind in growth too,” Gerica said. “I don’t think there was enough in the system for them to get to the size we usually see.”

The biggest problems are in Louisiana, hit hard by the BP oil spill and the high river. The Army Corps of Engineers opened two Louisiana spillways this year to divert high water from the Mississippi to keep river levels down, but all that freshwater hurt shrimp grounds, said Jerald Horst, a Louisiana biologist and shrimp expert.

“It’s a subnormal shrimp season. Prices haven’t really been that good. The supply of shrimp isn’t where it should be, which we attribute to the massive amounts of freshwater,” Horst said. “That’s always caused a depressed shrimp harvest.”

Louisiana so far has brought in about 26.5 million pounds of shrimp during the brown shrimp season. In 2009, 27.4 million pounds of brown shrimp were harvested and in really good years, like 2004 and 2006, more than 48 million pounds of brown shrimp were harvested. 

Horst said there is a lot of speculation that the smaller catch may be related to less demand for shrimp since the spill put doubt in consumers’ minds about the safety of seafood from the Gulf.

The Louisiana Commission of Wildlife and Fisheries voted to open the fall shrimp season for Louisiana on Aug. 22 at 6 a.m. The commission on Thursday set the season based on recommendations by state biologists and public comments.

There are two seasons in Louisiana, by far the most important shrimping Gulf state. Brown shrimp are caught in the spring and early summer and white shrimp in the late summer and fall months. But brown shrimp like salinity and the freshwater stunted their growth this year, Horst said.

In Mississippi, the shrimp industry is enjoying a better year.

“Last year was a total disaster,” said Richard Gollott, an owner of the Golden Gulf Coast Packing Co. in Biloxi. “It’s pretty normal this year.”

Mississippi opened its shrimp season a bit early this year because regulators worried that the freshwater from the Mississippi would have depressed prices and supply.

Joe Jewel, the deputy director of the Mississippi Office of Marine Fisheries, said 2.9 million pounds of shrimp has been caught this year, the best season in the past five years, he said.

He said the weather and environmental conditions in the Gulf have been ideal.

“We have beautiful shrimp,” Gollott said.

There was no sign of oil contamination and, he added. “We have the most tested shrimp in the world,” he said.

There are a few places on the Louisiana coast — Bay Jimmy, Grand Terre Island and portions of the Mississippi River’s bird’s foot delta — that remain closed due to the BP oil spill.

The last 10 years have been extremely tough on shrimpers. The industry has been hit by cheap imports of farm-raised shrimp, high fuel prices, catastrophic hurricanes and the oil spill.

Dean Blanchard, a shrimp dock owner in Grand Isle, said the year has been terrible for him. His dock is located in an area that was hit hard by the spill. He said his dock has processed about 2 million pounds of shrimp this year, or about 5 million pounds less than usual. He also said he was down to seven workers. In good times, he hires as many as 80 people.

“Ever heard the expression ‘Peace of mind is priceless?”’ he said. “How can you have peace of mind? I laid off a couple more guys today.”

Shrimpers are also fighting new restrictions being considered by federal regulators to force them to have special devices on their nets to allow endangered and threatened sea turtles to escape when they get caught in shrimp trawls. The new restrictions are being considered after hundreds of sea turtles were found dead last year and scientists have linked those deaths to shrimp boats.

The proposed restrictions are not sitting well with fishermen.

“All of a sudden we kill 600 turtles in 2010 when the majority of us didn’t fish or were working for BP? How could we have killed them?” Cooper said.