Community Corner: Fishing has been his life

By ANTONIO VINDELL

Jose Cuevas talks about his many years working in the local shrimping industry. (Staff photo by Antonio Vindell)

Port Isabel resident Jose Cuevas has been connect­ed to the Gulf of Mexico during the better part of his life.

He came from Tampico, a town on the Mexican gulf coast, at the age of five and started working with the local shrimping indus­try as a teenager.

“I went to school and fin­ished the eighth grade,” Cuevas said while sitting on a stool inside the shop of his business, Cuevas Trawlers Inc. “From then on, I started working in the shrimping industry.”

He said he worked as a header, a rig man and then became a boat captain at the age of 21.

After that, Cuevas started running a vessel, called Poco Loco, with a partner until he took full control of the boat.

Today, he owns a fleet of nine boats he sends out to the gulf every year dur­ing the Texas shrimping season and to the coast of Louisiana whenever Texas closes its waters to shrimping for about 45 days in late spring and early summer.

For more on this story, pick up a copy of the Jan. 10 edition of the Port Isabel South Padre Press.