Wild Caught Gulf Shrimp
 

I am wondering if I should stock up on the wild caught shrimp I am so fond of.
Will we ever be able to get the shrimp again or will the oil slick ruin it for our lifetime?

I wouldn't count on it for a long time. They have already shut down all shrimping as well as all other harvesting in the gulf. Prices in Mobile and I'm sure other places have already gone up and soon there won't be any at any price. This is so sad. What is really sad is how many people this affects. The fishermen and the tourism industry.

The oil spills after Katrina were worse,something not mentioned much by the news.

The shrimp will come back as always.

I stocked up on shrimp, but not the wild caught stuff. I figured that the price of all shrimp would end up going sky high due to the oil spill.

I'm far from a "greenie" but after seeing how wild shrimp are caught and seeing some google earth pics of what the water looks behind the boats I won't eat it any more.

We have shrimp boats around here,what exactly do you mean about what is behind the boats?

Most will drag the bottom with the nets to stir up the shrimp...

I don't get the comment about the behind the boat thing either?? I grew up shrimping in this area of NC. Where dragging(shrimping) is done the bottom is sandy, clean, and an area great for clams! In areas where it has been banned the bottoms are muddy and nasty. The clams and oyster have greengill, if they are lucky enough to live. It's all but dead here now. So many people depend on the water for their livelihood. I hope with the tragedy in the gulf that a silver lining comes to the Crystal Coast of NC and the Lowcountry of SC. Commercial fishing in these two areas need the pick me up really bad.
I am sorry but this is a very touchy subject for me.

I was checking out google earth of an area I knew and noticed what I thought was a boat leaking something. I was able to zoom in to see enough to convince myself it was a shrimper and what appeared to be a leak was the sediment he was churning up. You could see miles of trails where he and other boats had been through. I got to thinking about how much damage they had to be doing.

The Gulf is a lot bigger than the Louisiana coast. The prices will go up and there will be still be shrimp.

I hope this brings into focus how important the coastal marshes are to this nation and that once the spill is over serious work will begin and not stop until the marshes are completely restored to historic levels. Imagine the amount of shrimp that would come out of those marshes.

Shrimping is just starting in South Texas .And theres Quite A few boats doing it, And By the way they are Using T. E. D.'s as required by Federal Law ( T. E. D. = Turtle Excluding Devices)

Around here,no-one can touch marshland really and if any is damaged or destroyed,it must be 'rebuilt' elsewhere.

The problem with the American shrimping industry is not to do with catch sizes but how much cheaper farm raised shrimp is from third world nations...and Americans only care about the bottom dollar it seems.

I think the pro-corporate "drill, baby, drill" people wont be chanting such in public for a while....

The commercial farmed seafood has poor taste quality, not much better than catfood I would guess. Rarely see natural "wild" seafood anymore other than coastal areas. Too many people, too small of a planet. In other words the bacteria colony is expanding too fast for the limited resources in the petri dish.

As to shrimp returning, maybe, but wouldnt look for it real soon. There is still oil under the rocks from Exxon Valdiez spill and fishing there sure hasnt recovered in past 20 years. But just drill baby drill, cause we use it all up, the Jewish tribal god will renew the whole trashed planet and make it all sweetness and light again. And Florida swampland is an excellent investment....

As I posted earlier,the spills after Katrina were bigger than this...and yet the gulf recovered.

I agree on farm raised shrimp but people like their shrimp to be a uniform size and color,none of this wild caught stiff....:rolleyes:

Problem isn't a shortage of the shrimp as much as no-one wants to pay for it...

Did y'all know most crawfish tailmeat is from China?Cheaper than Louisiana wild caught crawfish somehow.

Watcher you are correct. Dragnetting and trawling the ocean floors causes more damage to the oceans and marine life than any other kind of human fishing activity and is causing dead zones due to suffocation. When one sees the satellite images of the silt plumes spreading for miles and miles behind the trawlers it's quite shocking. This practise is now starting to be banned in many places around the world.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0215121207.htm

.

Funny isn't it, that they can raise shrimp and ship it across the ocean cheaper than we can catch it right off shore.

People, not just Americans, care most about the bottom dollar. Can you tell the difference in taste between wild caught and pond raised shrimp? I know I can't tell the difference between pond raised catfish and wild caught.

Catfish is another thing coming from China and other places...even though the catfish farms were scattered through out the deep south.

Black mussels now come from there too,as well as Tilapia...

I am not a big fan of seafood from China,a little something to do with it being one of the most polluted places on the planet.:shocked:

Since I doubt you spent years and millions doing your own study, perhaps you would care to share your source of this proclamation? Alaska hasnt recovered in 20 years, doubt gulf will recover sooner. There were for sure flooded chemical plants, oil storage tanks, etc during Katrina, but nothing like whats continuously coming from this well and not anywhere near as widespread.

As to food, I am totally convinced the average American has no idea what real food is supposed to taste like.

Its not that difficult to understand. Shrimp and crawfish must be de-tailed by hand. That means you need a lot of people. The differences in the standard of living and the cost of living leads to a difference in the cost of labor.

Say you have two factories which needs 40,000 man-hours of labor per week. One is in the US where labor cost (which includes wages, taxes and necessary fees) is $15/man-hr. The second is in China where it was $5/man-hr. If it cost you $250,000 per week to ship your product you'd still be make $150,000 more per week from your factory in China.

Maybe depends where you catch them. If it grew wild in a sewage lagoon, or somebody fed it on "fish chow" in a pond, probably isnt the tastiest. But friend couple years back insisted I go with him to one of these all you can eat catfish restaurants. The catfish they served was disgusting. Not in how they cooked it, but in the flavor of the fish itself. I'd describe it as fried fish flavored dogfood.

Course maybe I just have sensitive taste buds or something. But I can tell quality food and most food available to low and middle class is NOT quality unless they raise it themselves or have access to some relatively pristine area to hunt and fish for it themselves.

The women who used to earn their livings heading shrimp here(most of the shrimp here was sold tail on) were paid by the pound...and weren't doing it in a factory but in an open shed next to the docks...decidedly low tech.

But they sure could head shrimp fast...they would just dump the boxes on a big table and grab handfuls and 'pop,pop,pop,pop', off go the heads.

I worked for the company that bought the shrimp from the shrimpers and then sent it further down south to be 'processed'.
An interesting summer.

But I see your point but as you mentioned transport costs surely must add in to the equation...

ITA about the taste of farmed catfish...I prefer wild caught, and under a foot...if they get too big they get muddy tasting

Actually, shrimping has been taking place in South Texas for ages. The first major legislation was enacted back in the 1930s.

What was meant is this years season, As that was the gist of the posts!!!!

From what I've been told the US catfish industry is collapsing. The ponds used to be cotton fields and other regular agriculture cropland. When those prices dropped the profit margin on catfish had a better return. That has reversed itself with high feed costs and higher profits for land crops so the ponds are getting plowed. Cheap Chinese fillets don't help either.

About 10 years ago I was contacted by a Chinese student looking for yellow perch fry to ship home. I expect that it won't be long before the Chinese start shipping perch fillets to the Great Lakes states.

I think there are machines that clean shrimp now but I could be wrong.

One thing the Gulf has going for it that AK doesn't and that is warm water. Oil will break down faster with warm water and intense sunshine than in the cold waters of AK.

That article is from 2005. Another point I'd like to make is that all the spills during Katrina were not from deep drilling operations. Your comparing apples to oranges here. The difference between the current Gulf Coast spill and Katrina is the difference between spilling a 5 gallon pail on the ground and a busted water main. In this case the "water main" is under 5000 feet of water. This isn't a simple case of sending some divers down to the bottom to turn off a valve. Divers simply can't go that deep. And while you may be correct that Katrina may have bigger spill that may not be the case in time if no one can contain this one. The bottom line is no one knows how much oil will keep gushing out.

Over 100 oil platforms were destroyed by Katrina/Rita.

My point is,you didn't hear of the huge oil spill after Katrina/Rita...which was MUCH bigger than this one at present.

But the Noos Media would make one think it was the biggest EVER in the region.

I've eaten catfish I got from all kinds of places. I used to catch them in farm ponds and the Mississippi River. I've also bought farm raised directly from the 'farmer', he was a friend of the family as well as from the fish market guy who caught them out of the river. Through out the years I've gotten good fish from each and I have gotten some that weren't so good from each as well. The same goes for restaurants; some good fish, some bad fish.


Maybe. Just as 95+% of the people can't hear the difference in a super high quality musical instrument and a cheaper one.

I'm not going to worry about the prices, if they go through the roof... about the only thing in the world I'm allergic to is shrimp. I can still eat em, if I do it fast, before my throat seizes shut. :eek: Trick is to stop just before that!

I have no idea how the spill will affect the shrimp. I'm sure TPTB shut everything down beforehand, instead of risking some tainted product to reach the market, and have a public relations problem.

The 420000 gallon barge spill in Port Arthur in January of this year only made one news report on CNN the day it happened. 15 skim tankers took through Feb cleaning that up.

According to all sources I have heard, this is the worst disaster the Gulf of Mexico has ever had. If you look at the sattelite images of the spill it will possibly affect all of the Gulf states before it is over. Katrina was not a sudden explosion in the middle of the Gulf. The rigs have time during a hurricane warning to shut everything down and that happened during Katrina. There was spills during Katrina and it was devastating but there was not that much oil in the Gulf. We are talking about millions of gallons of oil in a body of water that is vital to the lives of thousands of families who make their living from the Gulf. The walmart stores around here sell imported seafood when it would be so much easier and much better to buy it locally. I refuse to buy imported seafood. I will do without first.

No...The Katrina/Rita oil spills were 6.5 million gallons of oil.

I agree with you about imported seafood.

To the original poster, if you want your wild shrimp you need to get them asap. All of the resurants are buying up all they can because they know the shrimpers are gonna be out of business for a couple of years. The charter boats can still go out from Destin on East, right now.

As far as y'all that started going on about the difference in wild and farm raised catfish and the oil spills after the hurricanes.... Yes, there is a difference between wild and farm raised catfish and it has nothing to do with how it's cooked or how it's fed. If you grow up eating wild catfish two meals a day (or more) for five days a week (or more) all your life (none of your business how old I am) you can tell. As far as the information that gets out after hurricanes.... After a storm, we (survivors, first responders, emergency management, law enforcement... I am all) are busy finding survivors, getting help for victims, getting and distributing food and water, clearing roadways so help can get in, little things like that. The oil rigs are prepared way in advance of the storms. A good number of coastal citizens do not prepare for storms themselves because they do not see the need. They think the government will come in and take care of them. The amount of oil that leaks from the rigs is insignificant compared with taking care of the needs of the humans that fail to take care of themselves.

I don't think we need to worry too much about the AVAILABILITY of wild caught shrimp as the part of the Gulf that is projected to be affected by the oil spill is a relatively small part of the total of the shrimping grounds in/around North America and certainly =world-wide. As tragic as this event is to the hundreds of thousands of folks that will be directly effected, the worst aspect to the consumer is that the industry will exploit it to extract higher prices for the product. Buy shrimp futures (tongue in cheek...)

Yes. In the short time, I would stock up, but only because the price will go up. You'll have fewer fishermen fishing for it. In Louisiana, for instance, you have probably 1/3 of the fishing areas closed. The other 2/3 are likely a bit extra crowded. Mississippi...don't know for sure but likely gonna be closed and the fishermen will likely lose some of their catch. They aren't a huge player anyway with only 70-80 miles of coastline. Alabama either.

Absolutely, you'll get more shrimp in your lifetime. Someone said it earlier in the hijacked portion of hte thread. The gulf is so much warmer than Alaska and that helps with the Gulf's resiliency. The warmth leads the oil to be (A) more volatile, so some of it goes to the air, and (B) made into a sheen, which is more easily consumed by naturally occurring bacteria in the gulf, the Mississippi river, the marshes, and on the muddy, silty beaches of Louisiana. Those bacteria will consume it, make more bacteria, and folks will see how resilient the coastal environment of the gulf is. Will there be tar balls? Yes. But nothing like the Exxon Valdez. Will there be wildlife damaged? Yes, unfortunately. Will parts of hte marsh be hit harder than others and suffer damage? Yes, and those will be what you see on the news and in the papers and magazines. But you won't lose the shrimp for your lifetime. They'll be back in a year or two. Someone mark this down. This time two years from now, you won't even get a 5 line article in the paper about the spill.

If I ate the wild caught shrimp, I think that I would stock up...This was the first story that I saw on the internet this morning:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37171468...new_york_times

Here is an excerpt:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Luckily, I just got a batch of local fresh shrimp from a friend who works in seafood processing. I got 10lbs for $3/lb. I bet those days are over for a while! We try not to buy any food from China, although American companies mix in raw ingredients and it's hard to tell where they come from. They (China) have too little regard for health and safety, plus it's just idiotic to ship food halfway around the world when plenty is available right here. How come I don't here people complain about that much?

I don't notice any difference in taste between wild caught and farm raised shrimp. The only difference I notice is between raw and pre-cooked shrimp. While I'd never turn up my nose at pre-cooked shrimp, raw shrimp, whether fresh or frozen, whether shelled or unshelled, has a superior texture. Crisp and succulent, not rubbery like the pre-cooked stuff. Makes it seem more fresh.

The way wild-caught shrimp are harvested really does seem pretty destructive, and I hope that all the shrimpers out there can find a way to convert their operations to farming.