The northern Gulf marine sectors were devastated by recent natural, technological, man-made and biological disasters. Estimates of direct losses due to recent disasters are complicated to make and must be done quickly and timely. The economic damages associated with disasters and pandemics provide critical evidence that commercial fishers, seafood processors, charter boat captains, workers and owners of marine businesses, and state regulatory agencies need to support requests for federal assistance through their legislative delegations. This economic information is vital in deciding whether to provide federal disaster assistance to affected marine sectors. Without this federal assistance, these marine businesses will not recover and continue making a living and supplying seafood products to the public.
To understand the magnitude and duration of the direct individual and joint losses associated with recent natural and human-made disasters, harmful algal blooms, trade wars, recessions and global pandemics to recreational and commercial fishing, and marine sectors, multi-year baseline financial information about each industry is compiled from various secondary sources. Econometric analyses of these long-term data are performed to determine the rate of economic recovery and measure the long-term damages to affected economic sectors.
The numbers are merely estimating the damages and can't be validated unless we conduct a man-to-man survey and ask every seafood processor, charter boat for hire and commercial fisher.
MASGC staff assisted industry businesses and personnel by providing disaster damage assessments that state and federal agencies and marine organizations requested so that the industry could receive assistance. Results are summarized in short reports and videos supported with images, tables and charts. They are posted at Mississippi State University (MSU) Coastal Research and Extension (CREC) horticulture, marine and disaster economics outreach program website.
Finally, a methodology is suggested to measure the economic impact of this effort as part of the Sea Grant outreach program. Let us start by assuming that direct loss estimates supported at least one percent of the Mississippi fishing, seafood processing, and charter boat industries. Therefore, those businesses were able to survive the disasters and maintain their businesses and jobs. Updated annual data on employment and wages are available at federal and privately-owned websites. Conservatively, we can say that 14 commercial fishing, 24 seafood processing and three charter boats for-hire jobs were sustained in Mississippi. With the assumed number of jobs that were supported and corresponding annual wages, the yearly impact of this outreach program was $1,311,438.
- Shrimp fishing: $38,448/job X 14 jobs = $538,272.
- Seafood processing: $28,834/job X 24 jobs = $692,016.
- Charter boats for-hire: $27,050/job X 3 jobs = $81,150.
Meet the author
Benedict C. Posadas, Ph.D.
Extension Research Professor of Economics
Since 1990, Ben Posadas has consistently developed and maintained the Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Center’s (CREC) extension and research program in economics with... Read more
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