"Our Hometown" Glynn County: Shrimping Capital of the World

Fried shrimp, baked shrimp, shrimp and grits...here in the South, we eat a lot of the tasty shell fish. Turns out Brunswick is known as the “shrimp capital of the world”.

Tuesday in "Our Hometown" Glynn County, News 3’s Meredith Ley found her sea legs and learned what it takes to be a professional shrimper.

So the saying goes, ‘the early bird gets the worm.’

But the sun hasn’t even come up yet off the coast of Brunswick. And we are not cursing the waters looking for worms.

Greg Boone is the captain of this ship, and he knows you don’t make money unless you are bringing in the shrimp.

“We don’t count all those hours we stay away from home, it’s just the hours were out here working. If we counted all of our hours, we would probably only see three dollars an hour. That’s all we would make. Believe it or not, I have been told that before by the government."

But before the day begins, it’s important to have a good breakfast. Greg’s son, Michael mans the stove and feeds the crew a hardy meal. 

As a third generation shrimper, Captain Greg knows the importance of working with family.

“My granddaddy started out 60 year ago, then my daddy, then me, right on down with my son doing it. I’ve been doing it for 40 years myself. I didn’t want to try anything else.”

We ride for about three hours until Greg finds a good spot to lay down the nets.

Now, it’s time to start shrimping.

Getting a good catch is more important now than ever these days. Greg says American fishermen were almost sunk by the importing trend.

“When they started importing shrimp years ago, other countries were sending in a lot more imported shrimp than they were supposed to. It hurt this business bad because they come in and dumped them in this country for a real cheap price.”

Making it almost too expensive for locals to fish at all.

“You had to be real careful about how you went out to fish because you would eat up your profit. It seems to be getting better now, but it took ten years for things to level back out.”  

Greg will drag his nets anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. During the height of the season, a good day could yield close to 500 pounds of shrimp. 

After a quick sample of his catch, Greg and the boys pull up their nets to see how they fared.

“Let it down a little, come on, right there.  Woo! That’s my good net there.”

Now it’s time to sort. We pick up handfuls of the squiggly shrimp and toss them into baskets. All in all, we collect about 150 pounds;  pretty good for an end of season catch.

“For this time of the year, it’s more than I was expecting to get. The shrimp were a lot bigger than what we thought they were going to be and if they stay this size going into next spring and summer, we are going to have a really good season next year.”

While we are looking for shrimp, the Blue crab and whiting are also separated because almost everything is able to be eaten.

The extra goes overboard and becomes dinner for the dolphins and birds that followed us all day.  But the one person that won’t dine on seafood, believe it or not, is the ships trusty captain.

“We used to cook shrimp and rice, shrimp and grits, shrimp and gravy... ha!  A little bit of everything with shrimp.  Then I turned 19 and I became allergic to them.”

And he hasn’t had one for over 30 years.  But Greg says he still loves the little shell fish, because they help him make a living and provide for his family.

“This season past, was one of our best seasons. If you get out here and you don’t like fishing, it’s a bad day every day. So you’ve got to love it to get out here.”

He says while every day isn’t always the easiest, there is nothing he would rather do. 

Shrimp season officially closed January 25^th.  It will open again sometime in the late summer after the shrimp have time to replenish.