Jumbo impact of shrimp
Americans eat 1 billion pounds of shrimp each year—that’s about 156,666,667 orders of shrimp cocktail. In the past decade, shrimp consumption has nearly doubled. What Americans don’t see when they take a bite into one of those little crustaceans, however, is the bite shrimp production has taken out of the environment and local communities.
Shrimp travel from the ocean to your plate via one of two methods: trawlers ply the open ocean for “wild” shrimp while a growing number of shrimp are farmed in coastal “aquiculture” pens. Both methods are extremely destructive.
Clearcutting the ocean floor
Shrimp trawling brings in about 2-3 million metric tonnes of shrimp every year. It also wreak
s havoc on rich seabed communities. In this method, a shrimp boat drags a trawl (a huge, conical net) along the bottom floor of the ocean, scraping the bottom and scooping up whatever is in the trawl’s path. (See “Clearcutting the Ocean Floor”) Trawling is not only destructive, it is extremely wasteful. For every 1 lb of shrimp caught, 5 lbs of unwanted bycatch are trapped in the net. Many species of turtles and fish are left on the deck to die, then thrown overboard in an unnatural concentration of decomposing flesh that pollutes the area.
Unsustainable aquaculture
As oceanic shrimp fisheries get depleted, shrimp producers are turning to aquiculture as a means to keep up with demand. Farming brings in about 700,000 metric tonnes of shrimp each year, a figure expected to double in the next few years. Currently, about half of the shrimp sold in the US are farm-raised.
Shrimp farming, unfortunately, has its own disastrous consequences. Most shrimp farms are located along tropical coastlines, where they produce copious amounts of waste, some of it highly toxic. Chemicals and fertilizers used in the farms seep into local water sources and estuaries, while some of the waste is dumped directly into the ocean.
Where shrimp farms are planted, native mangrove forests—a vital component of coastal ecosystems—are torn out. Mangrove perform many functions, serving as breeding ground and home to many species (75 percent of the tropic's commercial fish species spend part of their life cycle in mangrove swamps), acting as water filter, and offering critical protection against shoreline erosion. In the last few decades, half of the mangrove forests in the world have disappeared. Over half of those losses are attributed to shrimp aquaculture.
Human toll
The effect on local human populations is severe. Without the mangroves, breeding grounds are lost and filtering capacity impaired. Coastal fisheries decline, crippling the local economy and cutting the food supply. The destruction of two or three acres of mangrove can result in a decline of hundreds of pounds of coastal marine catch. Dr Vandana Shiva, Indian Physicist and environmental advocate, 
estimates that the average shrimp farm will provide 15 jobs on the farm and 50 security jobs around the farm, but will displace 50,000 people through loss of land, and loss of traditional fish and agriculture.
Sometimes, removing this vital mangrove buffer can spell disaster in a more dramatic fashion. In 1991, thousands of people were killed in Bangladesh when a tsunami descended upon a stretch of coast cleared of mangroves to produce shrimp farms. In 1960, a tsunami of the same magnitude resulted in no fatalities.
Another Way
The steep rise in shrimp farming is a direct result of consumer demand, but its long term social and environmental consequences make shrimp a luxury the world may not be able to afford. Armed with the right information, however, consumer demand can become a potent force for change. Many environmental groups are working with local farmers to farm sustainably. By farming the shrimp away from the coast, and using mangrove forests to filter the farms water systems, farming can be less destructive. Other groups are developing certification standards for aquaculture, and some are developing bycatch reduction devices, which reduce finfish bycatch in trawling by 40%. By seeking out sustainably produced shrimp, letting suppliers know that is your preference, or simply not eating shrimp, we can begin to effect change.
Learn more about the Conscious Consumer Marketplace.
If you would like for your company to be listed in the Conscious Consumer Marketplace, please email Carolyn Danckaert or call 301.891.3683 ext. 125.