PORTLAND – The opening of the northern shrimp season brought plenty of shrimp but few buyers, forcing some fishermen to unload their catch at cut-rate prices.

About 50,000 pounds of unsold shrimp sat on ice at the Portland Fish Exchange Wednesday morning as fishermen and dealers searched for buyers.

Marshall Alexander of Saco caught 11,000 pounds on Monday and Tuesday, the first days of the 40-day season, but he and his two crew members didn’t leave the dock Wednesday because there was no money to be made.

After several years of restricted catches, the state’s shrimp industry has lost many of its processers and much of its market, according to Alexander and others. “We don’t have the people with the machines to peel this stuff,” he said.

Alexander gave away some of his catch because he was afraid he’d have to throw it away.

“I just hate to see things wasted,” he said. “This is plain mismanagement of the fishery.”

The lack of demand is sure to cut into much-needed off-season income for many Maine fishermen, who sell through the fish exchange and directly to dealers along the coast.

The weekdays-only season, which runs through March 13, was a compromise between fishermen who had asked for 64 days and biologists who recommended that the season be canceled to protect smaller shrimp that had yet to mature and lay eggs.

Full shrimp seasons typically last about 180 days, but the season ran only 38 days last winter and 25 days two seasons ago because of warnings that the population was in danger of collapse. Maine fishermen last year harvested just 853,000 pounds, the smallest catch since 1980 and a fraction of the 18 million pounds caught in 1996.

The lack of buyers appeared to validate industry predictions that restricting the supply would eventually kill the market and processing industry.

“It’s just the beginning of the season, but it’s really a disaster,” said Bill Bayley of Bayley’s Lobster Pound in Scarborough, which used to hire large crews to clean shrimp each winter and now handles only a small amount. “Nobody could stay in the business.”

A worldwide oversupply of foreign shrimp may have contributed to the lack of demand.