Prawn fishery
The following profile provides the socioeconomic context of the prawn fishery in British Columbia. It includes an overview of the commercial and recreational sectors. This overview is based on data collected from DFO commercial harvest logbooks and sale slips, public reports, and DFO surveys on harvest prices and recreational fisheries.
Long text version
2024 Economic profile of the prawn fishery
Commercial fisheries overview
The commercial prawn fishery is a limited entry, competitive fishery with prawn (spot prawn) being the target species. Other shrimp species (Coonstripe, Humpback and pink shrimp) from bycatch accounts for about 1% of total harvest.
All values are from 2024 compared to 2023 in 2024-dollars by calendar year, unless otherwise specified.
Key metrics for the prawn fishery, all values are from 2024 and in 2024 dollars:
- Landed value ($69.4M), decreased by 8% since 2023.
- Wholesale value ($73.4M), decreased by 14% since 2023.
- Active vessels (195), decreased by 1% since 2023.
- Licence eligibilities (246, no change since 2023) with 63 communal commercial licences. Licence eligibilities represents the number of issued licences.
- Licence value ($1.2M in 2023), increased by 35% since 2022.
2024 data are considered preliminary and are subject to change.
Annual prawn landings (in kilograms) and value (in 2024 dollars)
Landings (in kilograms)
- 2013 - 1.7M KG
- 2014 - 1.7M KG
- 2015 - 1.9M KG
- 2016 - 1.3M KG
- 2017 - 1.2M KG
- 2018 - 1.7M KG
- 2019 - 2.0M KG
- 2020 - 2.0M KG
- 2021 - 1.7M KG
- 2022 - 1.6M KG
- 2023 - 1.6M KG
- 2024 - 1.7M KG
Landed value (in 2024$)
- 2013 - $40M
- 2014 - $43M
- 2015 - $40M
- 2016 - $23M
- 2017 - $33M
- 2018 - $62M
- 2019 - $42M
- 2020 - $33M
- 2021 - $52M
- 2022 - $69M
- 2023 - $75M
- 2024 - $69M
Commercial fishery BC prawn - 2024 landed weight map
- Prawn harvest: 1.7 million kilograms in total volume
Income diversification of licence holders in active fisheries (2024)
In 2024, 72% of revenues for prawn licence holders came from prawn fishing with the rest coming from other fisheries. Halibut (9%), crab (4%), geoduck (2%), sablefish (2%), and sea cucumber (2%).
Exports: Prawn and shrimp are mostly shipped frozen to markets in USA (48%), and China (39%) followed by Japan (6%), Hong Kong (4%), and India (1%).
$4.0M in value-added from wholesaling and processing was generated by 47 companies located in B.C.
The prawn fishery directly contributes $50.3M (GDP) to the provincial economy, with a direct employment and income contribution of 725 FTEs and $32.9M respectively.
There are two land-based hatchery facilities to culture prawns but are currently inactive.
Prawn and shrimp accounted for 31% of total recreational shellfish fishing days in 2023 (8% of total fishing days).
The tidal water recreational fishing survey data is not available for 2024.
Data
The commercial data and the recreational data that informed this work can be downloaded here.
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