Pink gold and the boats that bring it
Fort Myers Beach is two things at once. On the Gulf side of Estero Island it is a beach town. On the back side, across the water on San Carlos Island, it is a working shrimp port, and the local chamber of commerce calls the pink Gulf shrimp landed there the pink gold the area is famous for.
The fleet's worst night came in September 2022. Hurricane Ian's surge threw most of the boats ashore, and the Fort Myers News-Press described trawlers heavier than commercial planes shoved into mangroves, parking lots and buildings.
Recovery was slow and expensive. The paper reported that most of the 40 or so boats in the fleet were put back in the water in an 8.45 million dollar operation, but some were scrapped, others still needed repairs and several left for other ports. A year after the storm it wrote that Fort Myers Beach might no longer be able to claim to be the biggest pink shrimp port in Florida.
The family names still matter here. Erickson and Jensen, started by Grant Erickson's grandparents, was by then the last of the larger historic shrimp companies on San Carlos Island. It had 11 boats before Ian and five fishing a year later, and Anna Erickson, poised to take over the business, said those five were coming back full every time.
Buying and catching shrimp here
Pink shrimp cook up sweet and firm, and the best way to taste the fleet is to buy them heads on from a local market and cook them the same day. Keep them on ice, not in standing water, and peel just before cooking.
If you want to catch your own, Florida lets a recreational harvester outside the Big Bend take up to 5 gallons of shrimp, heads on, per day, with a vessel limit of 5 gallons no matter how many people are aboard. Cast nets, push nets and small seines are all legal gear, and you need a saltwater fishing license unless you are exempt.
