Tammy Gordon shows off a shrimp boiler used to cook 1,000 pounds of shrimp in June.

DELCAMBRE — The 65th annual Delcambre Shrimp Festival kicks off today and the town is abuzz with the familiar excitement the yearly volunteer-run celebration generates for Delcambre residents.

“We start prep for festival right after the (previous) festival ends, looking for bands for next year,” festival president Tracy Trim said. “From the middle of July until August, it’s pretty much Shrimp Festival time for me and a lot of our volunteers.”

Trim estimated 100,000 people attended the festival during its traditional five-day course last year and said he wants that number to increase with this year’s 65th anniversary.

“The weather is great. The only thing that might hurt us is the economy is kind of down, but I hope people will still come out and enjoy themselves,” he said. “Our prices are fair. I’m hoping people still come out and support our festival.”

In addition to the usual food, music and carnival offerings, the festival has two new components: the renewal of water fights among area fire departments and its first Madam Ambassador, Ruth Pitre, who has worked in the shrimp industry since moving to Delcambre in 1957.

Pitre joins Queen Bailey Delcambre, 19, and King Roland Esponge Sr. as honorees at the five-day festival.

“Every year we try to get bigger and better and improve our food and entertainment. Any of the food dishes, we try to bring them back,” Trim said. “We want to have as much shrimp in every possible way we can cook it. We want to have the best entertainment, whether it’s local entertainment or national entertainment.”

Volunteers coordinate to prepare shrimp dishes for the festival: boiled shrimp, fried shrimp, shrimp sauce piquante, shrimp salad and shrimp pasta, to name a few.

“For three to five weeks, they bread (the shrimp),” said Tracy Gordon, a volunteer who does public relations for the festival. “It’s fresh. It’s breaded; laid out shrimp by shrimp on big trays … and then it’s frozen. Three or four days after it’s frozen we take them off the trays, put them in big plastic bags so they’re ready to fry the day of the festival,” Gordon said.

Gordon said the festival prepares about 1,000 pounds of locally caught shrimp in the elementary and high school kitchens starting in June. The shrimp is frozen until the day of the festival to accommodate the heavy influx of guests — an influx so heavy Gordon said the festival sold out last year and had to “re-bread” more shrimp for the last two days of the festival.

Jackie Toups, the festival’s secretary of more than 37 years, said the festival raises money to give back into the town.

Although he declined to disclose the festival’s revenue from the precious year, 

Trim said about $40,000 of the festival proceeds go back into community organizations that contribute to the festival, such as the Boy Scouts, the Delcambre High School band, athletics department and Project Graduation, Delcambre Elementary School, the Delcambre Youth Basketball Association, the town of Delcambre, the Delcambre Fire Department and the Alpha Delta Kappa Alpha Nu Chapter.

“As president, it makes me feel really good (for) a little community like Delcambre to bring 100,000 people in. That’s amazing to see. We can have one of the best festivals in the state,” said Trim.