Gulf Coast Shrimpers Are Going Out of Business With Alarming Speed

Murry Kimball never wanted to be a shrimper. The 64-year-old spent much of his childhood learning the ways of the ten-legged crustacean; anytime school wasn’t in session, he and his younger brother would be dragged out to work on their father’s boat in the Gulf waters of southeast Texas. “I stayed seasick,” Kimball remembers. “I hated shrimping so much, I wanted to become a game warden and shut my daddy down.” Instead, after high school Kimball went to work in Port Arthur’s shipyards and refineries and stayed there, until declining health forced him to retire seven years ago. Now he plies the trade he once rejected, because it’s the only other job he knows. Most days, he gets up at sunrise to cruise the inland…

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