"FAIRHOPE, Ala. — A customer is waiting as Patrick Gormandy steers his deep-water trawler — the Captain Sam B — back to the dock after a day of shrimping on Mobile Bay.

Gormandy shovels plump shrimp from the boat's holding tank into plastic tubs that look like old-fashioned laundry baskets.

"If only there were more of them," Gormandy says. Today's catch is less than half of what he would typically harvest in the middle of summer. Gormandy has a notebook scribbled with pages of orders he can't fill.

"It seems that every year is worse than the last," he says. "This one is the worst one on record." Alabama oyster harvesters say their catch is also down.

Gormandy blames the decline in part on a federal project to expand and maintain the Mobile ship channel, the route through the bay that allows big ships to get from the Gulf of Mexico into the Port of Mobile."

Debbie Elliot reports for NPR August 12, 2025. [2]