Delcambre, LA (KLFY) – Shrimpers have been dealing with a number of issues lately. Dead zones have become an addition to them.

A dead zone is an area where there’s little to oxygen for living things to survive.

The problem stems from fertilizers in crops from the Midwest that run down the Mississippi River and into areas like the Gulf of Mexico.

It is the damage those fertilizers do in the Gulf of Mexico that affects shrimpers. “They cause algae blooms all of the algae then falls to the bottom where it is then eaten up by bacteria and other things that consume all the oxygen around it.

“They cause algae blooms all of the algae then falls to the bottom where it is then eaten up by bacteria and other things that consume all the oxygen around it. It causes these big areas of no oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico,” said University of Louisiana-Lafayette Assistant Professor James Nelson.

As for the shrimpers, they have seen the problems firsthand.

“Seems like too much freshwater the water seems to have no salinity in it and it’s been like that for two or three years now and it’s causing the shortage of the shrimp,” Carlton Sauce said.

Sauce says this is not the number one problem that shrimp hunters face.

The first priority dealing with the amount of rainfall that has hit the area as of late.

“The shrimp just not going to grow anyway. Once they get a lot of the rain they tend to drive further into the Gulf before they mature in size. They leave prematurely,” Sauce explained

The rain increase from May to June stands at just over two inches.