The Environment Pays the Price for Shrimp

March 18, 2004

Most American shrimpers trawl for shrimp by dragging nets across the ocean floor, catching and killing tons of other marine life at the same time. Wasted "bycatch" is an environmental travesty, yet these shrimpers are asking for duties on shrimp imports in an effort to preserve their way of catching shrimp. To learn more about the shrimp industry's collateral damage click here…

As consumers we should support aquaculture, which is the raising of shrimp on farms. Ninty percent of the shrimp we Americans eat is imported from countries where shrimp is raised on farms. It is because of this efficient practice that we have seen the price of shrimp drop over the last several years. The other 10 percent of our market is supplied by American shrimpers who generally trawl for shrimp in the open ocean. Shrimp trawling is the world's most wasteful fishing practice, with unwanted animals comprising up to 80 percent of the weight of the total catch. Consider the following:

• Shrimp trawl nets account for 10 million tons of bycatch per year - 35% of the world's total.
• A global average of 5.2 pounds of marine life is wasted for every pound of shrimp caught by trawling.
• The highest discard ratio in the world was recorded in Trinidad where, according to the FAO, almost 33 lbs of marine life was wasted for every pound of shrimp caught.
• An estimated 150,000 endangered sea turtles die in shrimp nets each year.
• Commercial catches of Red Snapper fish in the Gulf of Mexico declined due to large number of young fish taken in shrimp nets
• Large fishing boats that sell only shrimp and discard commercially-viable marine life are the most wasteful. Small-scale traditional fishermen are more likely to use their bycatch.
• There is also growing scientific concern about the environmental impacts of dragging heavy shrimp trawling gear along the ocean floor.

Environmentalists successfully pushed for laws in the 1990's to require all shrimpers who sell their catch in the U.S. market, to use Turtle Excluder Devices (T.E.D.'s) with their nets. While good for the environment, these devices increase the cost of catching shrimp. Even so, open water shrimpers around the world must use them, and increasingly the world's shrimpers have turned to aquaculture as a more economical and environmentally friendly way of raising shrimp.

The remaining shrimpers who still prefer to trawl in the open ocean are now seeking financial protection from imported, environmentally friendly aquaculture-raised shrimp. U.S. flag waving open ocean shrimpers claim their distress is due to foreigners dumping cheap shrimp on the U.S. market. While hiding behind the stars and stripes, they are asking the tax payer to support their obsolete, inefficient methods which harm the oceans and drive up the price of shrimp.

In the olden days, cowboys herded thousands of heads of cattle across the open range. But the cattle stripped the range of everything green, trampling the ground into vast fields of dust or mud, and leaving the landscape littered with cow pies. In addition, there was often not enough food or water available, the cattle were often attacked by wild animals, and they did not gain much weight. Eventually, cowboys figured out that it was more economical and environmentally sound to raise cattle on ranches.

It is time for the last remaining shrimp trawlers to follow the cowboy and learn to farm. Growing shrimp on farms is considerably less expensive than fishing in the open sea, and so the product is better able to compete against farm-raised foreign imports. Duties on competing imports would not be necessary and American consumers would not be forced to pay higher prices for a product that is available for less in other countries; nor would we be forced to subsidize a practice that still wastes thousands of tons of fish each year.
Click here to read CWT's blast fax to Congress on shrimp.

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