Father Sinclair Oubre has spent almost his whole life near the shrimping community of Port Arthur, Texas. “Growing up in a maritime community was important to me,” he says.,

He left Texas as a young man to attend Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and after earning a bachelors degree there, Father Sinclair went on to earn two more degrees at the Catholic University of Belgium. He was drawn back to his maritime roots in 1979, and worked as a mariner on a boat our of Louisiana. In 1986 he was ordained into the priesthood, and since, has been involved in both Catholic and secular organizations that advocate on behalf of maritime communities and laborers. Father Sinclair ministers to and assists shrimpers through the Apostleship of the Sea, an effort of the Catholic Church to extend its presence to fishermen and other seafarers. Father Sinclair does his work through the Port Arthur Shrimpers Association. 

Father Sinclair spent much of the past quarter of a century protecting the community he loves. In the late 1990s the Texas government was pushing legislation to restrict fishing, and the Vietnamese shrimpers of Port Arthur had no organized body to participate in development of new law. Their wives approached Father Sinclair for help with starting an association. Under his guidance, the fishermen organized themselves, elected a president, and worked to have the legislation modified.

Shrimpers today face a wide variety of difficulties. They are struggling to make a profit after paying for fuel, and their access to fishing grounds is limited by rigs, sunken vessels, and other obstructions, as well as by assorted regulations. According to Father Sinclair, “The problem is that they’re so busy fishing, they don’t have time for the politics.” Luckily for the shrimpers, Father Sinclair attends fishing conferences and meetings to speak out on their behalf.

Shrimpers face economic difficulties that are compounded by the “collapsing market structure” that has been created by farmed and foreign fish and shrimp. “It’s been my experience that where we’ve seen fish farming, we’ve seen the degradation of wild fish… Farmed fish fills the market with low quality products and pushes the good [wild] stuff out of the market.”

Father Sinclair points out that, as a Catholic, he promotes proper stewardship of the environment, but he also tries to keep the issue in perspective: “There is a problem when people are blaming shrimpers for the degradation of the ocean.” He cites coastal development, the phosphate fertilizers flowing down the Mississippi River into the Gulf, and excessively consumptive lifestyles as the true threats to the ocean. “If we get rid of shrimpers in the Gulf, then we’ll just get our shrimp from Asia and South America.”

Father Sinclair is taking the hard and compassionate stance that the welfare of shrimpers must be protected at the same time that environmentalism and sustainability are practiced. In his eyes, the path to prudence and responsibility means avoiding excessive buffets of all–you–can eat imported shrimp and eating reasonable amounts of Gulf–caught shrimp.