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Owner closes beloved mom and pop fish house

The owner of the Hudson Shrimp Docks says "it makes no financial sense" to keep the business open.

By GARRETT THEROLF
Published September 22, 2005

HUDSON - Before her husband died, before a thicket of regulations and fees bloomed around her, Martha Beneduci was the matriarch of the last standing mom and pop fish house on Pasco County's Gulf Coast.

Triggerfish, grouper, shark, mangrove snapper, vermillion snapper, all were sold whole and nothing had been out of the water for more than six days. The king of all was shrimp.

Regular customers of the Hudson Shrimp Docks rewarded her by traveling from Spring Hill, Tampa, and as far as Orlando.

The old blue market supported 40 fishing families until it began its decline five years ago.

Eventually, death came slowly for the operation that the Beneducis bought in 1986. The property was sold to a dentist in November. Martha Beneduci closed the fish house in April because of the death of her husband and told customers she would reopen soon.

But reopening never came and the final death of the business wasn't marked by the posting of a "closed" sign or any other physical marker but by a resolution made in Beneduci's own mind in recent weeks.

"I finally saw that it makes no financial sense" to reopen, Beneduci said.

The government fees were too high. Prices for shrimp were too low. Recent bans on grouper fishing coincided with the busiest time of the year: Lent.

The closing of the business, which had been open more than 40 years, was a blow to the hardscrabble neighborhood.

Al Beneduci, Martha's husband, "loved his water and he loved his boys," Martha said. "Everybody in Hudson has been on a boat with him at some point."

Fishermen and shrimpers milling around Port Hudson Marina on Wednesday said they had all worked the business's old flagship, Capt. Al, at one point.

"Been on that boat since I was 17," said Keith Humphrey, 30, a third-generation shrimper who has been reduced to supplying the niche industry for live shrimp that supplies restaurants and specialty stores, mostly in the Northeast.

"It's even more of a struggle now," Humphrey said. The Beneducis' daughter, Georgette, said the fish house's organization structure was simple:

"My father had a simple agreement: You have free rent for your boat, just bring your fish load to the fish house."

Unspoken was the agreement that the fishermen, most unable to read or write, wouldn't be cheated.

Among the core group that supported the market, some have found work as day laborers.

Martha Beneduci, 51, is their godmother.

"I feed them. I buy them clothes. I know their shoe sizes. There are some that lived here for a time," she said.

As for herself, Beneduci has retreated into her stilt house with a porch overlooking a sleepy canal. "It's not for sale. It won't be for sale," she said.

Garrett Therolf can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6232 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6232. His e-mail address is gtherolf@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 22, 2005, 01:04:14]