After 1 week, La. closing special shrimp season prompted by oil spill in Gulf of Mexico

Special La. shrimp season closing 6 p.m. Tuesday

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says a special shrimp season will end at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Secretary Robert Barham opened the season last Wednesday to let trawlers harvest marketable white shrimp before any possible effects of the oil spill showed up in state waters.

A news release says department biologists find that marketable white shrimp have been taken, leaving only juvenile brown shrimp. It says the only reason for closing the season is to let the brown shrimp grow.

The area that will close Tuesday includes Zone 1, from the Mississippi-Louisiana state line to the western shore of South Pass, and inshore waters of Zone 2, from South Pass to the western shore of Vermilion Bay.