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Problem
Product/ Shrimp
In my family, shrimp and other shellfish are a holiday tradition.
Someone always generously accepts the responsibility of negotiating
the holiday seafood crowds, and pays the hefty price required
for the family shrimp cocktail; our sumptuous prelude to Christmas
Dinner. It is with sadness, then, that I bring the bad news
about shellfish. It turns out that eating
shrimp is one of the worst things you can do for the world’s
oceans.
The environmental costs of shrimp fishing and farming have
hovered at the edge of my peripheral vision for a long time,
but it wasn’t until recently that the issue was brought
home for me. I’ve been watching my way through the astoundingly
beautiful “Blue Planet” documentary series about
the world’s oceans, produced by BBC/Discovery The footage
of in the series is really a notch above: there are incredible
shots of giant whales scooping up shoals of fish, exquisitely
bizarre footage of deep sea animals fluttering up to the surface
to feed, scary images of tiny snails chasing following the
trail of a dead fish. What’s interesting about the series
is that for all it’s amazing content and beautifully
shot images, it makes little mention of the peril that faces
many of the ecosystems and animals it shows. It was not until
I got to the last DVD in the series and started watching my
way through the “Special Features” section that
I ran across a feature-length documentary that was meant to
run alongside the series, which discussed the environmental
threats facing the world’s oceans.
There was something incredibly compelling about watching the
conservation documentary at the end of the “Blue Planet”
series. As a consumer, I’ve overlooked the issues surrounding
seafood. I usually feel like I’m overburdened by all
of the other kinds of responsible-consumer issues, and because
the oceans are “our of sight, out of mind,” I
turn a blind eye, and enjoy whatever seafood I want.
Additionally, seafood is an important local industry. I’ve
worked in a fish market, and I’ve known a number of
people both in Massachusetts and California who make their
living from the sea. In light of how hard it is to earn your
living as a fisherman, it has often seemed to me that they
are the last group of people who need a bunch of whiny tree
huggers on their backs.
After watching the Blue Planet series, though, I started to
feel like I needed to take my seafood consumption decisions
more seriously. After 7 hours of programming about the oceans,
I can hardly pretend ignorance about what’s going on
down there. Though my understanding only scratches the surface,
it is clear to me that the oceans are fabulously beautiful
and complex, and that they are at the same time very deeply
threatened by our fishing practices, and our nonchalance about
water pollution.
One of the forms of fishing that seemed most grotesquely destructive
and wasteful was the process by which we fish for shrimp.
The footage of shrimp fishing on Blue Planet documentary was
very graphic. Large
trawl nets are sent over the back of fishing boats, which
then sieve through large areas of the ocean where shrimp are
known to live. When the nets are pulled up, the problem
with this method is immediately evident. Often, for every
pound of shrimp that is recovered from the nets, ten or fourteen
pounds of other ocean organisms are also scooped up. The documentary
showed the nets being dumped out, and fisherman deftly extracting
a few prawns, while fish, crabs, sharks, rays, and whatever
else happened to be in the way of the net lay gasping for
air, or already lifeless. By the time the contents of the
nets were sorted and the shrimp were removed, almost all of
the other organisms had died.
There have been some innovations of late which are designed
to reduce the amount of other animals taken into shrimp nets.
One is a “bycatch reduction device” that allows
fish and other animals to escape the nets that trap the shrimp.
These devices can dramatically reduce the amount of bycatch.
Unfortunately, these devices are not yet widely used worldwide.
(Most of the shrimp we consume comes from Southeast Asia and
Mexico, where fishing regulations are not yet strongly enforced.)
As a result, if one is going to buy shrimp, it is wise to
try to purchase shrimp harvested in U.S. coastal waters, where
bycatch reduction devices are generally utilized.
As is often the case with seafood, much of the shrimp now
on the market is farmed; and as with many other types of organisms,
farming shrimp is often just as destructive
as catching it in trawl nets. Shrimp aquaculture was
broadly established in the 80s and 90s throughout Southeast
Asia: often with delicate mangrove environments being cleared
to make way for the shrimp farms. Because shrimp was farmed
very intensively, the farming process had a “slash-and-burn”-type
effect, where high-intensity shrimp culture would rapidly
decimate the water and biodiversity in the segment of the
coast where it was being practiced to the point that the farm
would have to be relocated to fresh mangrove in order to stay
productive. This cycle of habitat destruction and farm relocation
greatly accelerated the destruction of the already-threatened
mangroves, which is in turn believed to be a reason why the
December 2004 tsunami in the region was so destructive. (In
the past, the mangroves acted as a buffer and a sponge, helping
to absorb the impact of both storm surges, and tsunamis.)
Though most of the shrimp available on the U.S. market comes
at a very high ecological cost, there are a number of businesses
attempting to provide more environmentally-sound alternatives.
One such company is “Ecofish,” which sells frozen
shrimp raised in closed-system pools in the southern U.S.
These farms raise the shrimp in man made pools, and keeps
the density of shrimp raised low enough to prevent disease,
and reduce the need for antibiotics. The Monterrey Bay Aquarium
website also recommends Oregon Trawl-Caught Pink Shrimp, which
are fished sustainably with the use of a by-catch reduction
device. Though it can take some time
(and sometimes a special order) to find these more ecologically-sound
shrimp alternatives, until worldwide fishing and farming methods
improve, it is probably well worth it.
By making careful decisions about where and how you buy your
shellfish, your holiday appetizers can be both responsible
and delicious, and you won’t have to feel guilty about
the thing you’re smothering in cocktail sauce.
C. Blackmar
Problem Product Investigator
Past
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