SHRIMPSUCK.org

#OccupyTheOcean

2011-10-02T22:52:00.001-07:00

The Ocean is the single biggest feature of our planet.

From one million miles away we resemble a small blue marble, from one billion miles a pale blue dot.

The Ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface, holds more than 80% of its biodiversity and 90% of its habitat.

Phytoplankton in the Ocean provide more than half of our oxygen and provides the basis of the primary protein for more than a billion people.

More than half a billion people, mostly artisanal fishers, owe their livelihoods to the seafood industry.

Humans have derived unmeasurable inspiration, joy, recreation and relaxation from the Ocean for millennia.

But WE have treated the Ocean poorly, and it's decline in recent decades has been catastrophic for our planet and its people.

WE have put too much into the Ocean, in the form of oil, sewage, fertilizers and pesticides, antibiotics, plastic pollution, noise and increasing levels of CO2.

WE have taken too much out of the Ocean by subsidizing and encouraging inefficient and destructive overfishing, bottom trawling, long-lining, purse seining, dynamite fishing, irresponsible aquaculture and illegal hunting.

WE have destroyed the edge of the ocean--places like wetlands, kelp forests, mangrove forests, river deltas, coral reefs and seagrass beds--where diversity and abundance once thrived, now turned into dead zones growing in size and number.

As a result of OUR behavior, the wildest animals and most remote beaches on the planet carry plastic in them, coral reefs are on the verge of disappearing, shark populations have been decimated, the ocean is warming and becoming more acidic and fisheries are predicted to collapse globally.

This situation will only continue to spiral downward, unless we listen, learn and change.

To slow, stop and then reverse this trend will take immediate, widespread and drastic actions, not isolated, small and incremental adjustments.

The control large corporations have over our political processes must be severed, bold legislation enacted and new behavior patterns widely adopted.

We need an Ocean Revolution.

The passionate individuals, organizations, expertise and solutions needed to do this exist around the world.

What is needed is a massive boost in personal and political will alongside strong actions and louder voices.

It is OUR coast and OUR Ocean.

The time is now to Occupy The Ocean.

[This is a living document: repost this anywhere you like, personalizing and adding to it as you will, in support of your good work for the Ocean]

Let Them Eat Shrimp: The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea LIVE web chat Aug 25th 3pm EST

2011-08-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

At 3 pm EST on Thursday,August 25^th, journalist Kennedy Warne, author of Let Them Eat Shrimp: The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea, will discuss how industrial shrimp farming and rampant coastal development are threatening mangroves and the people who rely on them.

Kennedy, founding editor of New Zealand Geographic magazine whose articles have appeared in National Geographic,Smithsonian, GEO, and other publications, will be participating in a live web chat, which can be accessed here:

http://bit.ly/hYbdBA

Thursday’s chat is the sixth in the Bookhugger series, co-sponsored by Island Press and TreeHugger. Please join us in this opportunity to learn more about the valuable ecosystem service mangroves provide and the risks of their continued destruction. Please also feel free to forward this information to anyone you think might be interested in participating.

GOOD Magazine: Locally Grown Shrimp on the Las Vegas Strip?

2011-08-09T11:29:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's dined at a Las Vegas buffet has experienced the city's obsession with shrimp cocktail. The formerly high-end hors d'oeuvre has been mass-produced in Vegas to the point where you can now pick up a parfait glass packed with the stuff for $1.99. The 22-million pounds of shrimp eaten there each year exact a severe toll on the environment, as most are flown in frozen from places like Texas, where shrimp cultivation happens at the expense of mangrove forests.

But a new land-farm 30 miles north of Vegas is preparing for its first harvest of shrimp, locally grown in the heart of the desert. Pioneering a sustainable aquaculture technology, Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp intends to grow half a million pounds of shrimp in its first year using a series of temperature-controlled, chemical- and antibiotic-free, indoor, salt water "ponds" within recycled shipping containers. "One of the things that makes our technology so unique and so special is our ability to place these plants and facilities any place in the United States or the world for that matter," Scott McManus, CEO of Blue Oasis, told the Associated Press. "We can put it in the desert. We can literally put it in Siberia." The ponds are a closed-loop system, which means they don't excrete waste into the local environment.

Chefs at upscale casino restaurants on Las Vegas's infamous Strip are signing up to feature the sustainably grown crustacean on their menus. Michael Minor, executive chef at Border Grill, told The Las Vegas Sunthat the shrimp tasted great—way fresher than the typical frozen fare. Call it a victory for locavores in the desert, who might otherwise have to subsist on tequila and nopal tacos.

Shrimp boats a major culprit in Gulf sea turtle deaths, group says

2011-07-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

BY RENEE SCHOOF

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Shrimp boats that fish in the Gulf of Mexico without the required turtle-excluder devices are killing more sea turtles than is allowed under the Endangered Species Act, the advocacy group Oceana said in a report Tuesday.

The organization based its new estimate of leatherback and loggerhead turtle deaths on federal fishery regulators' emails about periodic checks on the use of the turtle-excluder devices. The group obtained the emails under the Freedom of Information Act. If the memos capture a representative sample of the fleet, the group estimates that 4,874 loggerheads and 108 leatherbacks were killed in the nets last year.

"There are other types of fishing gear that can be dangerous to sea turtles, and there are other problems like oil spills and plastic pollution, but we think the greatest threat now is the shrimp trawl fishery," said Elizabeth Griffin Wilson, senior manager for marine wildlife at Oceana.

Shrimp boats that trawl on the seafloor have been required to have turtle-excluder devices for nearly 20 years. But Oceana said the problem of sea turtle deaths remained unsolved because of noncompliance, poor enforcement and exemption from the rule for some types of trawlers.

The group said the true number of dead turtles was probably higher because it didn't include turtles that were killed because the devices were set at the wrong angles, deaths from trawlers that weren't required to have the devices or any trawling in the Atlantic Ocean.

Since January, more than 423 injured or dead sea turtles have washed up in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week. The number is consistent with last year, during the BP oil spill, but higher than in previous years.

"It's clearly a problem because there are way too many dead turtles," said C. David Veal, the executive director of the American Shrimp Processors Association in Biloxi, Miss.

The fishing industry blames the oil spill, but sampling by federal officials shows compliance with turtle-excluder device rules is inadequate, Veal said.

"Over time, apparently, we've gotten a little lax at that because the numbers show there's a problem," he said. Still, he said, the data available so far don't make it clear that the shrimp industry is the major culprit.

Meanwhile, the industry has moved to greater use of skimmer trawls, which don't require turtle-excluder devices, he said. Skimmer trawls are required to limit their tow time, but Oceana said there was evidence of violations.

Dean Blanchard, who runs a shrimp business in Grand Isle, La., with 1,400 trawlers - skimmers and bottom trawlers - said the oil spill, not the shrimp industry, was to blame for turtle deaths.

"It's from the same problem that they had last year," he said. The oil spill also killed porpoises and pelicans, he said. "Are the trawlers killing the pelicans?"

What's more, other fisheries, wildlife and cruise ships also kill sea turtles, but only the shrimp industry gets blamed, Blanchard said.

A turtle-excluder device is a grid of bars fitted in the neck of a shrimp trawl. Shrimp pass through the bars, but when sea turtles hit the bars they're ejected through an opening. While the device is open, however, some of the catch can be lost.

Oceana examined memos from federal fisheries officials who checked on the use of the devices in Mayport and Fort Myers, Fla., Biloxi, Miss., and ports in Texas and Louisiana, plus state inspections in Georgia. The memos showed that of 76 vessels checked in the Gulf of Mexico, 17 percent had no turtle-excluder devices or the devices were blocked intentionally.

In Mississippi and Florida, none of the 22 vessels checked was in compliance with the rule. In Georgia, 47 percent of 30 vessels observed last year were in compliance.

Oceana announced that it plans to sue the government over its management of the shrimp trawl industry. Other environmental groups recently have done the same.

NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen said the agency was reviewing Oceana's information, but couldn't comment because of the litigation.

The National Marine Fisheries Service recently announced that it's considering changes in how it regulates the industry from North Carolina to Texas. Possible changes include requiring turtle-excluder devices on all types of trawlers and closing some areas to shrimping.

NOAA announced last week that it put extra personnel on docks in the Gulf to inspect turtle-excluder devices and help shrimpers comply with the rules. It also planned to increase enforcement patrols on the water.

Shrimpers kill too many turtles in Gulf of Mexico

2011-07-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Many boats don't have the equipment required by law that will help them avoid turtles.

By Renee Schoof
McClatchy Newspapers

Posted: Wednesday, Jul. 20, 2011

Tina Toomer of the Bluffton Oyster Co. shows off a new net and turtle excluder device installed on the shrimp boat "Daddy's Girls" in preparation for shrimp season in South Carolina. Jay Karr - THE ISLAND PACKET/AP

WASHINGTON Shrimp boats that fish in the Gulf of Mexico without the required turtle-excluder devices are killing more sea turtles than is allowed under the Endangered Species Act, the advocacy group Oceana said in a report Tuesday.

Thousands of Gulf Sea Turtles Killed by Shrimp Trawls

2011-06-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

Posted: 6/22/11 11:51 AM ET

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Imagine that you're going for a swim in the ocean, when suddenly you're scooped up by an enormous net that drags you under. Scrambling to find an escape, you realize you're stuck, and you won't be able to come up for air. There's no way out.

This is the reality for many sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico, who have been turning up dead in appalling numbers. Last year more than 600 sea turtles were found either dead or injured in the Gulf, which is more than six times the average over the last two decades. And already in 2011, more than 560 have washed up. And since only a miniscule portion of dead or injured sea turtles wash up on shore, the real number of turtles dying is enormous.

I was shocked to learn that while sea turtles have been undoubtedly affected by the massive oil spill last year, there's another culprit: Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawls. Not all trawls in the Gulf shrimp fishery are required to use Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), which are escape hatches that prevent sea turtles from drowning in trawl nets. Without TEDs, shrimp trawls are essentially sea turtle death traps.

Like you and me, sea turtles are air-breathers; when they get caught in fishing nets they may be unable to come up for air. Each of the six sea turtle species found in U.S. waters is listed as either endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act, which means that they may go extinct in the foreseeable future.

But did you know that under the Endangered Species Act, the government authorizes fisheries to injure or kill a specific number of sea turtles? That's right, and more than 98 percent of all sea turtle interactions authorized to U.S. fisheries are given to the shrimp fishery.

The government assumed that TEDs are 97 percent effective and authorized the shrimp fishery to kill 1,451loggerhead sea turtles. Oceana recently released evidence that so many shrimp trawls are not using the escape hatches properly that the number of loggerheads killed is likely thousands higher.

Loggerhead nesting populations in the U.S. are struggling -- and these shrimp trawls aren't helping.

The solution, as Oceana and other environmental organizations have pointed out, is simple: the government must require TEDs in all trawls, especially shrimp trawls, and enforce these regulations -- or else shut down the Gulf shrimp fishery.

Sea turtles have been swimming in the oceans for millions of years, and now these ancient mariners are being unnecessarily pushed toward extinction. It's time to give sea turtles a breather.

Susan Rockefeller is on the board of directors of Oceana, the international ocean conservation organization.

Shrimping Makes April Deadliest on Record for Gulf Sea Turtles

2011-05-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

For Immediate release: May 5, 2011

Contact: Chris Pincetich, Sea Turtle Restoration Project

(415) 663-8590 x102; cell (530) 220-3687; chris@tirn.net

Carole Allen, Gulf Director, Sea Turtle Restoration Project

(281) 444-6204, cell (281) 455-4415, carole@seaturtles.org

Teri Shore, Turtle Island Restoration Network

(415) 663-8590 x104; tshore@tirn.net

PHOTOS of dead sea turtles stranded on Mississippi beaches available.

GRAPHS of dead sea turtle data available.

LINKS for more information at bottom of Press Release

April Deadliest on Record for Gulf Sea Turtles

http://www.seaturtles.org/article.php?id=2022

Unprecedented numbers of dead sea turtles wash ashore

A tally of sea turtles found dead or dying on the beaches along Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama found April to have the highest numbers every recorded in a single month, 188 as of April 28, since records began in 1986. The average annual number of sea turtles found stranded in these three Gulf states 1986-2009 is 97, but reached 600 last year due to conditions resulting from the BP oil spill.

“The health of the Gulf and local sea turtles has been impacted by the BP oil spill and now ‘business as usual’ shrimping operations are jeopardizing critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles,” said Chris Pincetich, Ph.D. with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project.

Of the 188 sea turtles found, 168 were Kemp’s ridleys. This species breeds and nests entirely within the Gulf of Mexico and was pushed to the brink of extinction in the early 1980’s when lingering effects of the massive Ixtoc oil spill combined with a growing shrimp trawl fleet to reduced the entire nesting population to less that 600 females.

The National Marine Fisheries Service declared an Unusual Mortality Event in mid-March when a over 30 dead sea turtles arrived in two weeks. Federal and state investigators are working to determine causes of the sea turtle strandings. Oil poisoning, harmful interactions with shrimp trawl nets, or a combination of the two are suspected.

No new protections have been put in place for endangered sea turtles since the BP spill despite ongoing Endangered Species Act review and petitions for emergency action from the conservation group the Sea Turtle Restoration Project.

Estimates calculated earlier this year by the National Marine Fisheries Service show Gulf of Mexico commercial shrimping killed 5,365 sea turtles in 2009. The species hardest hit with an estimated 4,168 killed was the critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle that reproduces exclusively in the Gulf.

“Based on available data, Gulf shrimping is the leading killer of sea turtles in the U.S.,” says Pincetich. “The chronic effects of living in BP oil is certainly making things worse for Gulf sea turtles.”

“Skimmer trawls must be required to use Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), or they should be outlawed. Tow times are almost impossible to enforce and we can not rely on voluntary compliance, given the record of Gulf shrimpers,” said Carole Allen, STRP’s Gulf Office Director. “Research shows that even short periods of forced submergence may kill a sea turtle”

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries reported that skimmer trawls were operating illegally in closed areas during the time the increased sea turtle strandings occurred. Skimmer trawls have come under increased scrutiny for not being required to use TEDs. Louisiana state law prohibits local law enforcement from inspecting TEDs.

LINKS

National Marine Fisheries Service data on sea turtle Unusual Mortality Event

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/turtles/gulfofmexico.htm

Data showing Gulf shrimpers are leading killer of U.S. sea turtles

http://www.seaturtles.org/article.php?id=1924

Environmental Report Card at BP spill one-year mark

http://www.seaturtles.org/article.php?id=2004

######

National Geographic: A step in the right direction with bottom trawling

2011-04-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

We Love Sinkey Boone, Shrimper and Ocean Lover

2011-04-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

Sinkey Boone was a shrimp fisherman in Georgia who changed the world. He worked long and hard to clean up his industry by inventing and advocating for something called a "Turtle Excluder Device" (TED), a simple device that allows sea turtles and other large animals to escape from deadly. Given the fact that bottom trawling for shrimp has killed hundreds of thousands of sea turtles around the world each year for decades, this was a major step forward.

Thank you Sinkey, and all the brave, ocean-loving fishermen like you.

Humble shrimper deployed ingenuity to save a species

Sinkey Boone of Darien, who died Sept. 1 in Brunswick, was born into a shrimp fishing family. His daddy was a shrimp fisher, he and his brothers were shrimpers, and some of his sons and grandsons still are shrimpers. And the Boone women have always been equally engaged in the family business — running the Boone docks in Darien, where the shrimp was readied for sale and distributed around the country.

And one of his inventions saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of sea turtles and brought the sea turtle and shrimp fishing communities to better understand each’s motivations and needs.But Sinkey was much more than a shrimp fisherman. He was a welder, a net-maker, a generous purveyor of folk wisdom and an inventor.

Sinkey is rightfully credited with inventing a turtle excluder device (TED) that shrimpers were willing to accept. Called the “Georgia Jumper,” it was a modification of an earlier invention of Sinkey’s called the Jelly-ball excluder, a device used to keep “cannon-ball” jellyfish from clogging shrimp nets and damaging the target catch of shrimp.

He liked to call it a “trawling efficiency device” because it helped reduce the unwanted catch of many species besides sea turtles and he thought it would make other shrimpers more accepting of its use.

Sinkey’s Georgia Jumper was also an alternative to the government-created, big, clumsy, boxy-type TED that shrimpers just didn’t like and called dangerous and unworkable. Instead the Georgia Jumper resembled a giant oval-shaped BBQ grill grid that allowed shrimp to pass into the far (cod) end of the net, and directed turtles and other unwanted “by-catch” out an exit flap. It became the acceptable standard for most shrimpers.

While Sinkey had an economic interest in promoting his device, his concern for sea turtles, the shrimpers and the oceans was his strongest motivation. He opened his home, his boat and his heart to promote understanding among environmentalists, shrimpers and the public.

He worked closely with our organization to promote TED use worldwide, welcoming fishery technicians from Mexico and Central America that we recruited to work with him into his home and shop. He traveled with us to Mexico and Costa Rica to meet with shrimpers there and attended many of the annual Sea Turtle Symposiums to promote understanding.

He built a half-size shrimp net complete with TED for the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Fishing for Solution” exhibit and helped arrange interviews for the Sea Turtle Restoration Project–United Nations TEDs video that was eventually translated into several languages and distributed around the world. Sinkey and his family also helped promote the Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s groundbreaking Turtle-Safe Certification Program of the 1990s.

All in all, Sinkey’s contributions to sea turtles, the oceans and a better understanding between environmentalists and shrimpers were monumental and effective. His recent passing is a loss for the Earth.

Todd Steiner is the executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network in Forest Knolls, Calif.

Cheap Shrimp, Hidden Costs

2010-11-22T13:05:00.000-08:00

This web project, Cheap Shrimp, Hidden Costs, is the culmination of a year-long investigation into the Thai shrimp industry undertaken by 10 students from UBC’s Graduate School of Journalism.

MORE

Shrimp has become one of the most popular seafood options among consumers due, in part, to its affordability.
Over the years, Canada’s reliance on seafood imports has grown – Canada imported over 60 percent of its domestic seafood product needs in 2001.
The majority of shrimp we eat is farmed, imported from countries in Asia, like Thailand, Vietnam, and China.
Shrimp in these nations can be raised in densely-packed ponds, which are susceptible to outbreaks of disease. To prevent this from happening, farmers often turn to antibiotics – some of which pose health risks to consumers.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspects a maximum of 5 percent of imported foods. In 2010, the agency rejected several seafood shipments from Asia for containing nitrofurans, a known carcinogen. Other shipments were rejected for containing tetracyclines and fluoroquinolones, two valuable antibiotics used to treat a wide range of infections, including chlamydia and anthrax.
The misuse and overuse of antibiotics in food production can also lead to antibiotic resistant pathogens in shrimp. Through consuming raw shrimp, resistant strains can be passed on to humans.
Resistant strains can also spread as a result of farmers handling shrimp infected with drug-resistant bacteria.
In recent years, there has been a severe lack of newly discovered drugs for treating human infections and the rate of antibiotic resistance has increased globally – a problem the medical community recognizes as a serious threat to humankind.

Sources: Statistics Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Environmental Microbiology, the Merck Manual for Health Care Professionals, the World Health Organization.

NOW Magazine: Molotov cocktail shrimp

2010-10-07T08:22:00.001-07:00

OUR EXPLOSIVE LUST FOR THESE TASTY SEA INSECTS IS FAR FROM GUILT-FREE

BY PAUL TEREFENKO

“Endless shrimp.” Type it into Google and you’ll get page after page of Red Lobster all-you-can-eat shrimp chatter. Shrimp has already dethroned tuna as the most eaten seafood in America, and Canada is seeing a similar trend.

It’s not tough to convince yourself that shrimp is easy on the oceans. After all, those delicious sea beetles reproduce like crazy, don’t need a lot of food to mature and grow to market size in just a few months. Heck, even the cute factor is low for a creature more suited to a scene in Starship Troopers than Finding Nemo.

But the reality is the shrimp industry, specifically in the southern hemisphere, has a massive effect on the world’s oceans even though its own stocks aren’t in trouble per se. From mangrove destruction to collateral trawling damage, that pink vessel for shovelling cocktail sauce into your mouth is not, as dieticians might argue, guilt-free.

“Even very aware people have no idea how their shrimp are caught or farmed,” says Wallace J. Nichols, a researcher at the California Academy of Sciences and the founder of light-shedding site shrimpsuck.org.

Just to be clear, the shrimp that we eat are either caught in the wild by trawlers or farmed in huge pools adjacent to saltwater.

“It doesn’t get much worse than dragging nets on the ocean floor, catching everything from invertebrates, fish and sharks to sea turtles. In some places 90 per cent of what’s caught isn’t shrimp,” says Nichols.

“We’re looking at 20 kilograms (of unwanted bycatch) for every kilo of shrimp caught in destructive shrimp fisheries,” says Robert Rangeley, WWF Canada VP for the Atlantic Region, making his number even higher.

“It’s like catching a squirrel by clear-cutting a forest,” says Monterey Bay Aquarium spokesperson Alison Barratt. Logically, when you’re after something as small as a shrimp you’re taking in everything bigger, but there have been improvements.

But here’s the rider: if you down North American shrimp, you’re way further ahead on the sustainable scale. U.S. and Canadian trawlers have excluding devices in their nets, and lobster-trap devices that allow bycatch to be removed alive are used for Pacific spot prawns.

Much of Canada’s Atlantic shrimp, which is all the wild-caught variety, actually goes to the UK.

Our shrimp is increasingly attaining MSC certification.

That’s great for the few who seek out sustainable shrimp. But these days even Dairy Queen and Taco Bell sell shrimp. “It’s everywhere and it’s cheap,” says Nichols.

To feed that cheap need, Asia fills the void. Three-quarters of global production comes from China, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.

“Consumers are contributing directly to the loss of mangrove forests, and wild fisheries, and to climate change problems,” warns Alfredo Quarto, executive director of the Mangrove Action Project.

In the case of roughly half the world’s shrimp industry, farming is the production method of choice – and mangroves are often razed so operations can be near salt water.

“Governments promoting shrimp farming aren’t able to control the industry,” says Quarto. Loose regulations allowed for the loss of 70 per cent of Ecuador’s mangroves, he adds. The number in the Philippines hovers around 60 per cent. It’s the same for Thailand, and India’s losses are estimated at 30 to 40 per cent.

It’s because of the market forces that will allow cheap shrimp to thrive that Quarto’s against certification, in particular by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), which is to farmed shrimp what the MSC is to wild shrimp. The label is set to roll out in coming months.

“We’re protesting and trying to get them to postpone. They’re not adhering to real needs and lessening public demand for shrimp,” says Quarto. The alternative to this destruction, he says, is supporting your local shrimp industry and accepting it as a seasonal food.

But criticism of shrimp farms doesn’t end at habitat destruction. “White shrimp are easy to farm, and that might mean you’re growing them where they’re not native,” says Barratt. “They’re invasive, and you risk escape with inland ponds.”

And then you have to consider diseases. “Waste is a huge problem. Ponds can become unusable, and you’re discarding treated (think antibiotics and pesticides) sludge into the environment,” says Barrett, whose organization’s Seafood Watch guide recommends avoiding all imported shrimp in favour of Canadian wild- caught and some U.S. farmed and wild varieties.

What makes U.S. farms work is tank farming that recirculates water without destroying coastland. Understandably, it’s more expensive.

Mark Powell, WWF International’s global seafood leader, believes that progress is being made on the shrimp front. He gives an example of a novel plan in Vietnam where the government is leasing spots in a coastal national forest area where shrimp feed as though they were in the wild.

“Farmers are allowed to grow and sell shrimp, but the situation is natural, and there’s no food input. It’s like a harvest lease – a hybrid between farming and fishing.”

And there’s always you and me. “Buyers can motivate change,” says Powell. “When customers express an interest in better shrimp, retailers and wholesalers make a change.”

It almost makes you want to plan an all-you-can-eat endless shrimp fiesta – which is precisely the attitude we should fear.

pault@nowtoronto.com

NOW | October 7-14, 2010 | VOL 30 NO 6

Incidental capture and mortality of sea turtles in the industrial shrimp trawling fishery of northeastern Venezuela

2010-09-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

JJ Alio, LA Marcano, DE Altuve. 2010. Incidental capture and mortality of sea turtles in the industrial shrimp trawling fishery of northeastern Venezuela. Ciencias Marinas, Vol 36, No 2.

Abstract

The incidental capture of sea turtles by industrial shrimp trawlers off eastern Venezuela is documented, based on data gathered by on-board observers from February 1991 through November 2000. A total of 275 trips were made, with a total of 55,992 h of trawling using either one or two normal nets of 20-m headrope length, equivalent to 59,744 h std. net–1 of 30.5 m upper rope length. In total, 63 turtles were captured: 20 Eretmochelys imbricata, 20 Chelonia mydas, 15 Caretta caretta, and 8 Dermochelys coriacea. All these species showed a wide distribution along the central Caribbean Sea and Atlantic coasts of Venezuela, but they were always caught in areas close to shore and not deeper than 82 m; the distribution of D. coriacea was more concentrated towards the Atlantic zone. The estimated CPUE for all four species, using non-standardized effort values, was 0.0011 ± 0.0003 turtles h–1 std. net, equivalent to one turtle per 930 ± 11 h std. net. The variation in captures throughout the year was not significant (chi-square = 1.29; P = 0.73), except for D. coriacea, which was only caught between January and May. No significant difference was observed between the capture of turtles during the day or night. Direct mortality ratio reached 19 ± 9.7%; the actual ratio of mortality caused by incidental capture is not known. Most individuals caught by Venezuelan trawlers were juveniles that most probably use the area as feeding grounds. Considering an average effort by the fleet of 310,000 ± 16,500 h std. net yr–1, an estimate of turtle capture before the use of turtle excluder devices was made mandatory in 1994 would be about 330 ± 4 ind yr–1, with an associated direct mortality of 63 ± 30 turtles. This capture rate would be the lowest among the countries where similar evaluations have been performed (Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, and USA). Key words: size structure, CPUE, distribution, Caribbean Sea.

La captura incidental de tortugas marinas por parte de la flota industrial de arrastre camaronera en el noreste de Venezuela se documenta, basada en datos recogidos por observadores a bordo desde febrero de 1991 hasta noviembre de 2000. Se realizaron 275 viajes, que totalizaron 55,992 h de arrastre, ya fuera con una o dos redes de 20 m de relinga superior, lo cual equivale a 59,744 h red estd.–1 de 30.5 m de longitud de relinga superior. En total se capturaron 63 tortugas: 20 Eretmochelys imbricata, 20 Chelonia mydas, 15 Caretta caretta y 8 Dermochelys coriacea. Todas las especies mostraron una distribución amplia entre la costa central del Mar Caribe y la costa Atlántica de Venezuela, pero siempre fueron capturadas en áreas cercanas a la costa y no más profundas de 82 m; D. coriacea tuvo una distribución más concentrada hacia la región Atlántica del país. La CPUE estimada para las cuatro especies, utilizando valores no estandarizados de esfuerzo, fue 0.0011 ± 0.0003 tortugas h–1 red estd., lo que sería equivalente a una tortuga por cada 930 ± 11 h de arrastre con red estandár. La variación en las capturas a lo largo del año no fue significativa (chi cuadrada = 1.29; P = 0.73), excepto para D. coriacea, la cual solamente fue capturada entre enero y mayo. No se observó diferencia significativa en la captura de tortugas de día o de noche. La razón de mortalidad directa alcanzó 19 ± 9.7%, desconociéndose la razón real de mortalidad causada por las capturas incidentales. La mayoría de los ejemplares capturados por arrastreros venezolanos fueron juveniles que probablemente usan el área como sitio de alimentación. Considerando un esfuerzo total promedio por la flota de 310,000 h ± 16,500 red estd. año–1, un estimado de la captura general de tortugas, antes de que el uso del dispositivo excluidor de tortugas de las redes se hiciera obligatorio en 1994, sería 330 ± 4 individuos por año, con una mortalidad directa asociada de 63 ± 30 tortugas. Esta tasa de captura sería la más baja entre los países donde se han efectuado evaluaciones similares (Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica y EUA).

Shrimpers kill sea turtles in Guatemala

2010-07-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

Over 30 dead turtles in Pacific Guatemala. According to the authorities, the animals died by suffocation. I have conducted surveys along the Pacific coast of Central America since 1996, and non acceptance of TED technology by the shrimp trawl industry is widespread. Furthermore, authorities NEVER punish infractors (authorities tend to be the infractors themselves, businessmen defending their private interests acting as public policy makers). Shamefully, its takes a foreign country to make Central American countries abide by its own sea turtle protection laws. Just look at Costa Rica, 4 US embargoes since 1999 (currently embargoed). Mexico is embargoed, other countries have suffered embargoes in the past. Its time to say no to shrimp trawling!

Más de 30 tortugas muertas en el Pacífico de Guatemala. De acuerdo a las autoridades, los animales murieron ahogados. Yo he dirigido estudios a lo largo de la Costa Pacífica de Centroamérica desde 1996, y la no aceptación de Dispositivos Excluidores de Tortugas es la regla. Además, las autoridades NUNCA castigan a los infractores (las autoridades tienden a ser los infractores mismo, empresarios defendiendo sus intereses privados quienes establecen política pública). Vergonzosamente, debemos recurrir a otros países para los países Centroamericanos cumplan sus propias leyes de protección de tortugas. Solo vean a Costa Rica, 4 embargos de los EEUU impuestos desde 1999 (actualmente embargados). México actualmente embargado, otros países han sufrido embargos en el pasado. Es hora de decir ¡Basta con la pesca de arrastre, que es un DESASTRE!

Randall Arauz
Pretoma

NYTimes on why shrimp + oil = dead sea turtles

2010-07-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

Shrimping and Sea Turtles: Is It Either/Or?

By SHAILA DEWAN

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Brian Stacy, a veterinarian and pathologist, performed a necropsy on a sea turtle at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Because of an unusually high number of turtle strandings since the gulf oil spill - about six times the usual number - environmentalists are asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to take extra steps to protect sea turtles from shrimpers.

As I write in my examination of animal deaths in the gulf in The Times, more than 450 dead turtles, most of them endangered Kemp's ridleys, have been found since the spill. Oil might be the most obvious culprit, but much of the evidence points to shrimp boats, whose nets can drown turtles.

One major problem with that theory is that there have been far fewer shrimpers in the gulf than in previous seasons. But there have also been reports that more turtles have been hanging around near the coast, raising questions about whether the oil has driven them there or there is some other explanation - for example, a rebounding population - for the increase. More turtles in heavily trafficked areas means more accidents.

Regardless of the cause, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Center for Biological Diversity are arguing that turtles, which are vulnerable to oil fumes and oiled food and which don't instinctively avoid oil, can't take the stress of more shrimping right now.

The Texas shrimping season opens Thursday night after its annual two-month shutdown, and boats from as far as the Eastern seaboard will be sailing there to shrimp. This year, with shrimp prices high, a high number of shrimpers are expected. Environmental groups are asking that the closing be extended and have notified NOAA that they intend to file a lawsuit charging that the oil spill requires a re-evaluation of commercial fishing policies under the Endangered Species Act.

"Right now, we need to be protecting the remaining fish and wildlife in the gulf, so it can provide a genetic pool for wildlife to recolonize once this mess is cleaned up," said Todd Steiner, a biologist and the executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network. "This is not the time to be short-sighted and selfish to both future generations of fishers and the American public by vacuuming up all the life that has survived the oil disaster."

Sea Turtle Restoration Project: Why shrimp really REALLY suck right now

2010-06-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

Over 30 juvenile Kemp's ridley sea turtles washed up dead in the Galveston, Texas area in April when shrimping activity increased and well before any oil was seen on stranded sea turtles. We called for more law enforcement and so far four Texas shrimp boats were found with Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) not installed properly and were fined. The Sea Turtle Restoration Project needs your help now to prevent needless deaths of hundreds of sea turtles in Texas and in federal waters this summer when the fishery opens again in July.

Oil Spill Will Increase Fishing Pressure on Sea Turtles in Texas

Each year, the state of Texas and the federal government close shrimp fishing from the middle of May for two months. The shrimp grow bigger and then sell for more money, while sea turtles are spared during peak nesting season. Because of the oil spill and fishery closures in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, hundreds more shrimp boats could rush to Texas waters from other states in July, a death sentence for endangered sea turtles.

Help Stop More Sea Turtle Deaths in the Gulf

Increased law enforcement could prevent the injury and deaths of hundreds more sea turtles this year. Over 253 dead turtles have washed up on beaches already, and many more were likely killed and sank. We must stop shrimpers who do not use the required TEDs, disable them, or install them incorrectly.

Please help us request maximum law enforcement in Texas and in federal waters from Texas Parks and Wildlife and NOAA law enforcement by taking these two actions below

1) Send a letter to Texas Parks and Wildlife and NOAA requesting increased enforcement of TEDs.

2) Contribute NOW to help STRP protect sea turtles in the Gulf from the threats to their survival. We need the help of people like you to help us save the sea turtles - thank you!

Sincerely,

Carole Allen, Gulf Office Director, Sea Turtle Restoration Project

Sea turtles killed in rush to get fish, shrimp?

2010-05-06T23:12:00.001-07:00

Boats investigated to see if safety devices removed after spill

By BRIAN SKOLOFF
The Associated Press

updated 10:55 a.m. PT, Wed., May 5, 2010

GULFPORT, Miss. - Federal fisheries officials are investigating whether aggressive shrimpers or other fishermen are causing the deaths of endangered sea turtles that have been washing up on Gulf Coast beaches with no signs of oil, an official said Wednesday.

Investigators will look at whether some shrimp boats taking part in an emergency shrimping season ahead of the Gulf oil spill removed devices from their nets that are intended to allow turtles to escape, said Sheryan Epperly, sea turtle team leader for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"The agency has been trying to collect information on not just the trawling fisheries but any other fishing that may have been going on in the area," Epperly said. "If the turtle excluder device is not properly used, then that likely could lead to the deaths of any turtles that get caught in the nets."

Wildlife officials say at least 35 endangered sea turtles have washed up on Gulf coast beaches, but it's not clear what's killing them. Necropsies have shown no signs of oil.

Given the endangered status of Kemp's ridley sea turtles, among the most imperiled turtles in the world, tissues samples being collected and examined are being "kept in the chain of custody ... in the event that it could end up in court," Epperly said.

She said officials with either state or federal agencies are looking into whether the turtle excluder devices were removed in the fishermen's' haste to gather the catch.

"I know it's being investigated," she said.

The Washington, D.C.-based conservation group Oceana has said officials need to determine what is killing the turtles quickly. Some experts have speculated they may have eaten fish contaminated by the oil spill.

"It's a good question," BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said. "Is the oil killing these turtles or not?"

Shrimping has long been blamed for sea turtle deaths. Shrimpers are required to install grid-like devices in their nets that are designed to allow turtles to escape. Shrimpers caught without the turtle excluder devices — or TEDs — may be fined thousands of dollars and have their catch seized by federal regulators.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36965750/ns/us_news-environment/

Turtle advocates urge halt to shrimping

2010-05-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

April 26, 2010 

TEXAS - A group devoted to saving endangered sea turtles Monday asked state and federal officials to halt all shrimp trawling on the upper Texas Gulf Coast because a large number of dead Kemp's ridley turtles washed ashore this month. Carol Allen, the Sea Turtle Restoration Project's Gulf Coast director, told the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that shrimp trawlers were responsible for the deaths of more than 20 Kemp's ridley turtles on the upper Texas Gulf Coast over 11 days, ending on Thursday. Allen said that four or five dead Kemp's ridley's were discovered on beaches Saturday, but Donna Shaver, Texas coordinator for the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network said that so far no weekend turtle deaths had been reported. “The best way to stop this is to stop the shrimping,” Allen said. 
READ MORE

Shrimpers sue BP

2010-04-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

Shrimpers filed suit against BP, saying contamination from the spill has caused and will continue to cause loss of revenue. The suit is seeking class-action status to represent all residents who live in or derive income from the coastal areas of Louisiana and would suffer losses.

Louisiana is the largest seafood producer in the lower 48 states, with annual retail sales of about $1.8 billion, according to state data.

more HERE

ALL WE CAN EAT SHRIMP

2010-04-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Along the Food Chain with Michael Olson

(Food Chain Radio #680)

The bite is on! We heard it on the radio: All you can eat shrimp. Come and get em!

And so, mouths watering in anticipation, we stampede across the floor and out the door for But wait!

How can they afford to feed us all those all-we-can-eat-shrimp?

Physical anthropology tells us that we, as human beings, have a very special relationship with seafood. Way back in human time, when we dined on roots, berries and mastadon flesh, our brains were small and, well, primitive. Then we began eating fish from the sea. These fish were at the top of a food chain that collected omega 3 fatty acids from tiny green algae and concentrated those fats in their flesh.

With this new source of omega 3s, the human mind began to grow in size and in complexity, and thus we became the omniscient sentients that we are today.

Given how much benefit we derive from seafood, its quite natural that our appetite for them has grown with the size of our population. As a consequence of our hunger, we are rapidly eating our way down through the worlds fish food chain, and now find that fish that were once considered inedible have now become delicacies-- peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches.

With so few fish left in the sea, we wonder

How can they feed us so much seafood, for so little money, when there is so little seafood left to catch! (The Forums #680)

Indonesia plans to privatise entire 90,000 km coastline for shrimp farms?

2010-04-09T17:40:00.000-07:00

theEcologistTV — November 24, 2009 — In an exclusive investigation, the Ecologist Film Unit reveals the impact of Indonesia's plans to privatise its entire 90,000 km coastline. To read the article that goes with this film, visit http://bit.ly/7Cqxbq at http://www.theecologist.org/

New study: MILLIONS OF SEA TURTLES CAPTURED, KILLED BY FISHERIES

2010-04-05T22:54:00.000-07:00

Six out of seven of the world's marine turtle species are at risk of extinction. Fisheries aren't helping.

By Jennifer Viegas | Tue Apr 6, 2010 12:05 AM ET

The sea turtle population has suffered tremendously as a result of bycatch losses, with six of the seven marine turtle species currently under threat.

THE GIST:

Millions of endangered sea turtles have been captured or killed by fisheries.
At least four ocean regions require urgent sea turtle conservation.
Consumers need to be aware that some seafood choices are more sea turtle-friendly than others.

Millions of endangered sea turtles have been accidentally captured or killed over the past two decades by longline, gillnet and trawl fisheries worldwide, according to a new report.

The report, published in the journal Conservation Letters, is the first global assessment of sea turtle bycatch for these three major types of fishing. Bycatch occurs when fishing equipment, such as giant nets or longlines with thousands of baited hooks, snag animals other than what they are intended to catch.

Turtles, which are air-breathing reptiles, often perish by drowning or by swallowing sharp hooks that can become lodged in the soft tissue of the turtles' throats and stomachs.

"For sea turtles, fisheries bycatch is the most serious, acute threat to the persistence of their populations," lead author Bryan Wallace told Discovery News, adding that shrimp trawling is one of the most damaging practices.

"Anywhere from 5 to 20 pounds of bycatch -- turtles, fish, mammals, invertebrates, coral -- is removed from the ocean to catch enough for just a pound of shrimp," Wallace, a science adviser for Conservation International, said. "In the process, the destruction to ocean habitats left in the wake of a trawl net is very much like clear-cutting and bulldozing a tropical forest. That habitat is changed dramatically, and its recovery, if possible, will take a very long time."

Wallace and his team compiled a comprehensive database of reported information on bycatch rates for the three major types of fisheries worldwide from 1998 to 2008. The total reported global marine turtle bycatch was around 85,000. Since the data only covered less than 1 percent of total fleets, and didn't even include bycatch information from small-scale fisheries, the researchers estimate actual turtle bycatch at 8.5 million or more for the analyzed period of time.

The highest bycatch rates reported were from Baja, Calif., Mexico (longlines), Uruguay (trawls) and from the North Adriatic region of the Mediterranean (gillnets). Overall, however, four regions emerged as being the most urgent conservation priorities: the Mediterranean, the Eastern Pacific, the Southwest Atlantic and the Northwest Atlantic.

In the Mediterranean, for example, "21 countries fish an area that is less than 2 percent the total surface area of the Pacific Ocean and less than 30 percent of the total land area of the United States," Wallace said. "The European Environmental Agency estimated that 65 percent of all fish stocks in the Mediterranean are overfished."

The sea turtle population has suffered tremendously as a result of bycatch losses, with six of the seven marine turtle species currently categorized as "Vulnerable," "Endangered" or "Critically Endangered" globally by the IUCN Red List.

To combat the problem, Wallace and his team recommend regional governance, such as establishing marine protected areas. They also propose sustainable fisheries reform, including seasonal and time-area closures to fisheries, as well as selective gear modification, such as the use of circle hooks and Turtle Excluder Devices. Responsible seafood consumption by consumers is also key.

For the latter, Wallace recommends poll or troll caught fish, like tuna, mahi-mahi and wahoo that have not been longline caught. "In general," he said, "mahi-mahi is a better choice than tuna or swordfish, because mahi-mahi grow extremely quickly, reaching adulthood in as little as one year."

Additional sea turtle-friendly choices include lobster from northeastern or California waters; Australian rock lobster; king, stone and Dungeness crabs; calamari; Pacific Northwest salmon; farm-raised tilapia; and most farm-raised shellfish. Additional recommendations are available through services like "FishPhone," where users text in the name of a fish and get information on it in seconds.

A separate study, conducted by Duke University scientists, found that more than 250,000 loggerhead and 60,000 leatherback turtles are inadvertently snared each year by commercial longline fishing, with bycatch being particularly common in the Pacific Ocean. In fact, Duke's Larry Crowder, who worked on the study, said more turtles "are killed than nest in the Pacific."

Both he and Wallace hope the proposed conservation measures are enacted soon.

Wallace concluded: "A holistic, ecosystem-based approach that incorporates economic interests of the fishing industry has the best chance of success."

Huffington Post on Seafood

2010-04-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

Shrimp is hugely popular among U.S. consumers, making it of high importance to know which options are most sustainable.

Pink shrimp is typically used in salads and shrimp cocktails. Wild-caught pink shrimp from Oregon is the best option because they have better population management standards in place.

U.S. farmed shrimp is also a good shrimp choice because they raise shrimp inland, away from coastal habitats, and in closed tanks or ponds that reduce harm to the surrounding habitat. U.S. farmed freshwater prawns are also considered to be one of the most sustainable options out there, as they are raised in small-scale operations that use practices compatible with the prawn’s biology.

More HERE

Blogosphere, twittersphere + the real world are buzzing about the shrimp blogger

2010-03-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

The blogosphere, twittersphere and the real world are buzzing about the shrimp blogger who appears in Taco Bell's new ads.

But they're not interested in eating any shrimp tacos. (described as gross, dangerous, ewww and insane #shrimpblogger)

Rather, the shrimp blogger's ad has driven record traffic to the ORIGINAL shrimp blog (since 2006) ShrimpSuck.org. It's a website that reveals the reality behind that pink little shrimp, America's #1 seafood. And it's not a pretty or appetizing reality. As much as 90% of what is caught by shrimpers around the world is thrown back into the ocean, much of it dead. This "bycatch" can include young sharks, sea turtles, lots of fish and just about any animal living on the sea floor. Shrimp farms my be even worse, if you can imagine that. Some shrimp farms destroy mangroves to build farms, pollute coastal waters with poop and antibiotics and send off shrimp that should be labeled "EAT WITH CAUTION".

The mass shrimp farms have driven down the price of shrimp drastically over the past ten years and make it difficult for the few clean shrimpers, the ones ShrimpSuck.org likes, to compete. Once a special meal, shrimp has gone mass production.

How else do you think Red Lobster can offer "all you can eat" for just over $7 or the likes of Taco Bell and Dairy Queen can have shrimp on the menu?

AdWeek.com

9 Problems Destroying Our Oceans (PHOTOS)

2010-03-29T08:57:00.001-07:00

Somehow this list failed to mention SHRIMP, the #1 seafood in the US.

While shrimp themselves are not generally overfished, catching them can involve up to 90% bycatch (of sea turtles, sharks, small fish, rays, crabs, etc), destruction of seafloor habitat and inefficient used of subsidized diesel fuel.

Farming shrimp overseas is often done at the expense of mangroves and the health of coastal communities, not to mention the shrimp we end up eating. Few consumers have any idea about the facts surrounding their $7 all you can eat shrimp or their $2 shrimp taco. How else have shrimp become cheap enough to be sold at DairyQueen and TacoBell? See ShrimpSuck.org for more info and info on best sources for the die-hard shrimp-eater.

(BTW, the photo of Doug accompanying the "trash vortex" note is from knee deep water, where most of the plastic pollution problem begins, in our backyards and homes)
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dairy Queen sells talking cockroaches? That's weird

2010-03-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

Watch the DQ talking cockroach ad HERE

Jamie Oliver Food Revolution Premiere (VIDEO)

2010-03-27T11:11:00.001-07:00

Shrimp (#1 seafood in the US) can be raised in antibiotic + poop-laden farms built on former mangrove forests, polluting coastal waters and wrecking communities...but fry them up and put them in a taco and none of that matters. ShrimpSuck.org
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Apply to be a REAL Shrimp Blogger!

2010-03-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

ShrimpSuck.org: The Original Shrimp Blogger Since 2006 is accepting applications for the position associate "shrimp blogger"

Please post your video application to YouTube.com and tag/keyword your video with ShrimpSuck and ShrimpBlogger

In it be sure to explain your credentials, expose your creativity, have a rich accent, and make abundantly clear your understanding of how shrimping with bottom trawls and shrimp farming in former mangrove forests is destroying the ocean.

Your application will be judged on creativity, clarity and true love of the ocean.

Thanks,

The Original (Real) Shrimp Bloggers
Not like that Fake TacoBell guy

30 sec shrimp blogger ad

2010-03-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

Taco Bell is riding the coat tails of the famous, original shrimp blogger, ShrimpSuck.org

We think that's just great, cuz it'll help us share the truth about the global shrimp industry!

Send us your original ShrimpSuck.org videos, parodying the Taco Bell ad, and we'll send you a prize and post yer video here : )

Philippe Cousteau with a friendly reminder

2010-03-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

I'm a Shrimp Blogger: The ad that made ShrimpSuck.org famous!

2010-03-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a shrimp blogger. I've traveled the globe to find the perfect prawn. So when I found out Taco Bell had Pacific Shrimp Tacos, with six succulent marinated shrimp, I had to try one immediately. The new Pacific Shrimp Taco, only at Taco Bell. [#FAIL]

Learn the truth about shrimp, here on the original shrimp blog: ShrimpSuck.org

And make your ocean friendly choices wisely and carefully.

ShrimpSuck.org: the original shrimp blogger

2010-03-18T22:35:00.001-07:00

Taco Bell has gone all out promoting what seem to be pretty gross shrimp tacos, if what's written on twitter is to be trusted.

Their ads feature a "shrimp blogger" who is also getting under people's skin.

Here's what a few folks have to say about the ad on various non-shrimp blogs:

"There is a taco bell commercial on lately that begins with a englishman say "i'm a shrimp blogger", he says this as if it is a normal title and we should not be mind boggled. Then he explains briefly some of his shrimp blogging exploits. Then he hears about the taco bell shrimp taco and needs to go get. Then the commercial ends with him saying " I can't decide side if gonna blog it or keep it for myself", or something to that effect. Ahhhhhhhh. That doesn't make sense, can't he just eat it then blog about it. But people don't visit blogs about shrimp dishes. also Blogging about shrimp couldn't could produce enough profit to finance traveling the world to do more shrimp blogging, he would need some kind of trust fund."

"I'm pretty sure this is one of the worst ads I've seen in a while. I'm also pretty sure that if they exist, I'd hate elitest Shrimp Blogging yuppies. Lastly, I guess T-Bell better hope Shrimp Bloggers exist, because who else would be crazy enough to order shrimp from Taco Bell?"

"Taco bell pacific shrimp taco please get off my television. Making me queasy, you look slimy, please leave me alone. Also there is no such thing as a shrimp blogger, I do not believe your lies."

Well folks, yes, there IS such a thing as a SHRIMP BLOGGER. Right here. Thank you Taco Bell for helping us out a bit with your multi-million dollar ad campaigns.

With any luck, we'll convince a lot of people to think before they eat shrimp and we'll save some patches of ocean, and a few sea turtles.

Don't forget, ShrimpSuck.org...and if you don't know why, have a look around. Don't been seen ordering the shrimp, unless you know it was caught/farmed without seriously messing up the ocean.

The Shrimp Blogger: Twitter Say "No Bueno" to TacoBell's Shrimp Tacos

2010-03-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

Just saw a commercial for the shrimp taco @ taco bell an threw up in my mouth!

taco bell need to chill out...shrimp tacos? gross

RT @LouisB_ I don't eat shrimp but I wouldn't dare eat no fuckin' shrimp taco from taco bell lmao. they probly some ol' rubbery ass skrimps.

@kevinspaul @jsbsox shrimp taco sounds like a disguised sexual innuendo in a Faulkner novel. Taco Bell cheapens it even more! Blech!

What he said. RT @dannyoneil I love Taco Bell for real, and I'm as likely to order a shrimp taco as I am to ask for a punch in the face.

@maggiesox And, I mean, I am not a picky person, I have no issues w/street food, etc. But SHRIMP at TACO BELL? Really?

Shrimp Tacos from Taco Bell? I'll pass...

I'd never eat....a shrimp taco from taco bell

Wife made a good point...probably not a good idea to eat shrimp from Taco Bell.

Very puzzled by this commercial airing during basketball for Taco Bell's shrimp tacos. Would YOU eat fast food shrimp?

Taco Bell + shrimp = death

Taco Bell has a shrimp taco? I have various feelings about that, and none of them are positive.

Taco Bell: Your beef alone makes people sick, so why on earth would we eat shrimp from you? Stop running the ads! It doesn't even look good!

@Akula I had a little gag reflex when I saw the ad for Taco Bell shrimp tacos. I can't even imagine.

@bobfescoe I tried it today. I love shrimp & I love Taco Bell, but together... Eh, probably not doing that again.

Did the shrimp blogger guy lose all of his credibility by endorsing the Taco Bell shrimp taco? Is the shrimp blogging community enraged??

I don't think I ever would brave shrimp tacos at Taco Bell, even if someone was holding any kind of weapon in my general direction.

Exactly! That's buying a trip to the ER! RT @MoBettaBluez: there is no freaking way i would ever eat a shrimp taco from taco bell

RT @Tipsy_Avocado Just looking at these Taco Bell shrimp make my stomach hurt! Lmao.

there is no freaking way i would ever eat a shrimp taco from taco bell

RT @Osamabindrankin: Taco Bell has a shrimp taco, I got one word for ya, WTF!...that's 3

Who in the hell told taco bell that they could make a shrimp taco that shit is just so nasty lol.. #nobueno

Taco Bell now serves shrimp tacos. So I can get salmonella with my diarrhea?

Does anyone else think taco bell's pacific shrimp taco sounds like the grossest thing ever made by a fast food restaurant?

Am I the only one that's completely terrified of the Taco Bell Shrimp Tacos? #foodpoisoning #bloodfart #diapers

The Real Price of Your Shrimp Taco

2010-03-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

Dead guitarfish, rays, and other species are tossed from a shrimp boat bottom-trawling in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Photograph by Brian Skerry via National Geographic

Village Voice: Taste Test, The New Taco Bell Pacific Shrimp Taco

2010-03-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

By Robert Sietsema

Is the American eating public ready for mayo in their tacos, and cilantro in their fast food?

The name of the thing put me on my guard. What the hell does "Pacific shrimp" mean? When I was a kid, "Gulf shrimp" meant something--wild shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico. But nowadays, nearly all shrimp we're exposed to are farmed in filthy and chemical-laden conditions along the Pacific coast of Thailand, so it's hard to get too excited about "Pacific shrimp."

Upon first opening the smallish Pacific shrimp taco, no crustaceans are visible at all.

Lately, there's been a fad for Baha-style fish tacos, so one might presume this was the immediate inspiration for the Taco Bell Pacific shrimp taco, which baits the trap, figuratively speaking, with whitefish, and then substitutes shrimp, while still partaking of the hoopla surrounding fish tacos.

Indeed, the Pacific shrimp taco is something of an upscale adventure for Taco Bell. The tacos go for $3.69 plus tax, totalling $4.02 apiece at the Union Square branch, which is a lot to pay for a taco. The ad emphasizes the quantity of shrimp, rather than size, nevertheless, my first question was, "How do they fit six shrimp inside a taco?" As you might have guessed, the shrimp are about the size of a baby's thumb. Thankfully, they taste fresh. But to find out how they taste, I had to wipe a tidal wave of mayonnaise-based sauce off the crustaceans.

Really, ensconced in their floppy flour tortilla, with huge amounts of mayo, the thing tasted very fast-foody, but not as bad as I feared. Still, the real message here is that Taco Bell is trying out two very aggressive experiments. One is adding mayo to the taco, rather than their pallid, plastic-sleeved sauces. Will mayo--indispensible to hamburger-based fast food chains--help goose up the sale of tacos, for an American audience that simply can't get enough fat?

The other message was even weirder. As I tried to plow through the entire taco (I managed to get down half of it before throwing the other half away), I detected an odd flavor in the greenery. Dissecting the thing more carefully, I discovered what it was. Cilantro! Have you ever heard of cilantro in American fast food? It's an idea that might catch on.

Finally, one small shrimp rolls out, smothered in mayo, looking nothing like the big plump pink beauties shown in the commercial.

Simple Statement on Why ShrimpSuck.org

2010-03-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

In case it's not completely clear.

Dragging huge, destructive nets on the sea floor to catch wild shrimp and destroying mangroves to farm shrimp is unacceptable.

Thanks,

ShrimpSuck.org

Monster Shrimp Invasion?

2010-03-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

Imported Monster Shrimp Now Living Here

By Orlando Montoya

Updated: 2 weeks ago

DARIEN, Ga. — Georgia shrimpers are cautiously watching the arrival of a giant shrimp from Asia that scientists can't yet say is friend or foe.

Tiger shrimp are unusually large Asian natives. It isn't known how their arrival in coastal Georgia will affect 'Wild Georgia Shrimp.' (photo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clayirving/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

)

Tiger shrimp are unusually large. A single one can grow to a quarter pound.

They're commercially farm-raised in Asia.

Scientists believe they took a ride here on an ocean freighter.

While only a handful have been spotted in Georgia, John Wallace of the Georgia Shrimpers Association says, he's worried about how fast they spread.

"That is a fear, that you would get a very aggressive shrimp that would come in and become a predator," Wallace says. "Three years ago, you heard of a few of them in the east coast of Florida. And it's all usually right around ports."

Tiger shrimp have been spotted from Louisiana to North Carolina.

Scientists can't yet say how they effect native species, since their numbers so far are small.

They could be dead-end survivors of their trans-Pacific rides -- or a more ominous local-born population.

The University of Georgia Marine Extension Service tracks sightings.

It's just one more worry for shrimpers faced with low prices for their catch and increasing costs to do business.

U. S. will embargo Mexican wild shrimp due to turtle issues starting April 20th

2010-03-02T09:45:00.002-08:00

Posted: Tuesday, March 02, 2010

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - March 2, 2010- Dick Gutting reported yesterday in a special Urner Barry trade alert that the U. S. State Department has decided to decertify Mexico under the U. S. regulations that require all wild shrimp imports to comply with U. S. turtle protection requirements.

US Inspectors found that some Mexican shrimp vessels were not using the required Turtle Excluder devices. (See seafood.com news Feb 26)

Sources say the violations were from the West Coast of Mexico and the Sea of Cortez. Mexico has a sufficient legal framework with regulations requiring the use of TED's, but apparently enforcement was the issue that concerned the inspectors.

The list of countries certified and decertified under turtle excluder rules is published annually by the U. S. State Department. Normally it is not very controversial, as countries that are not certified can get reinspected and reinstated.

For example, Honduras was decertified a few years ago, and re-instated four months later.

But in the case of Mexico, there are potential problems with recertification due to the Mexican shrimp seasons. Very little harvesting is done between April and September, meaning there will be little opportunity for re-inspection. This means that the re-inspection may not take place until the fall, which would potentially disrupt some Mexican wild shrimp exports. Farmed shrimp, and shrimp caught in artesenal fisheries that don't impact turtles, are exempt from the embargo so long as they have the proper certificates for export. The fact that artisenal fisheries are exempted may become an issue, as there are such fisheries in the Sea of Cortez who export product to the U.S.

Sustainable New Shrimp-farming Method Could Revitalize the U.S. Industry

2010-01-11T23:33:00.000-08:00

The new system is a greener way to grow shrimp because its water is never released into the environment.

“The nutrient-rich water used in traditional shrimp farming ponds must be released and replaced periodically,” Samocha said. “The danger is that the incoming water can introduce harmful pathogens. And the release of the nutrient-rich effluent can contaminate the receiving streams with high levels of nutrients that promote algae blooms. They, in turn, can deplete oxygen and cause fish kills and other negative environmental impacts.”

By creating a sustainable production system, water levels are occasionally topped off to replace minor losses to evaporation and management of particulate matter.

MORE HERE

WTO Seattle 10th Anniversary: Andre Explains Why ShrimpSuck.org

2009-11-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

Andre explains why ShrimpSuck.org from Wallace J. Nichols on Vimeo.

Mangroves disappearing fast with global appetite for shrimp

2009-10-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

Oyos Saroso H.N. , The Jakarta Post , Bandarlampung | Fri, 10/16/2009 2:51 PM | The Archipelago

A large area of mangrove forests in Lampung, which acts as a buffer for coastal residents from tidal waves, has been depleted rapidly over the past year, especially in South Lampung, East Lampung and Tanggamus regencies, where only 25 percent of the original forests remain.

Of the 160,000 hectares of mangrove wetlands that previously covered these regencies, only 20,000 ha remains.

A large portion of these has been turned into traditional shrimp farms, many of which are owned privately.

The shrimp farm operators, who generally come from Jakarta, Tangerang and as far away as Central Java, now own land titles, having bought the land from coastal residents.

"Two years ago, up to 136,000 ha of the 160,000 ha of mangrove forest was badly damaged, indicating that 20,000 ha had been subject to clearing ... Surprisingly, the provincial and regency administrations have not taken any action against *the destruction*," Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) Lampung chapter director Hendrawan said recently.

A number or regency administrations and Lampung provincial administration had initiated a mangrove replanting programs, Hendrawan said.

"The central government has even provided funds from the state budget worth billions of rupiah for the purpose, but most of the mangrove seedlings have died because of a lack of maintenance and supervision, such as in Sragi and Ketapang districts in South Lampung," Hendrawan said.

Lampung Walhi data shows that of Lampung's mangrove forests converted into large-scale commercial shrimp farms, most were in South Lampung and East Lampung regencies.

"A large portion of these areas is believed to have been cleared by two large-scale hatchery companies," added Hendrawan, who declined to name the companies.

The presence of the large-scale shrimp farms in Lampung had led traditional fish farmers to clear more mangrove forests to make way for shrimp farms, he said.

Ketapang resident Sumarno, 45, said many coastal residents had sold their rice paddies to newcomers in the past two years. Sumarno, who owns 2.5 ha of rice paddies, sold his land last year because it could no longer be used to grow rice.

"We were forced to sell our *land* because it was no longer productive and sea water had permeated the groundwater because of severe coastal abrasion," Sumarno said.

South Lampung Environmental Office head Hasanuri said the regency had virtually no mangrove forests left, and many areas of its remnant mangrove wetlands were in a critical condition.

"Of the 505 ha of mangrove area in Ketapang village, South Lampung, no more than 10 ha remains, spanning at a width of only four meters from the coastline," he said.

Lampung is recognized as a windu shrimp exporter. Each year the province exports between 60,000 and 70,000 tons of shrimp to the United States, Canada, Australia and a number of European and Asian countries.

Why shrimp suck TWITTER style

2009-10-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

We checked TWITTER for #endless shrimp

Here are some of the results. Bottom line, we eat shrimp til we get sick, meanwhile trawling and farming them wrecks the ocean. ShrimpSuck.org!

@OREOaddict16: i just ate my weight in endless shrimp at red lobster..yum =)

@Anskylove: its endless shrimp @ redlobster! I miss dating. I'd b smashing shrimp everyday if I was dating "I eat so many shrimp I got iodine poisoning"

@tamtee13: endless shrimp is no joke

@ EricDesmarais: Eating endless shrimp... they just keep coming... help... send lemons...

@stardahc: MMmmm endless shrimp for dinner...then watchin....Zombieland!

@SHEmmyonpoint: stomach hurts cas we decided 2 see who cud eat mst red lobsters endless shrimp...ate 50+ shrimp

@DSchnell: Ate 90 pieces of shrimp at Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp, now it's time for bed.

@cancanberry: magine how many shrimp lose their lives during Endless Shrimp @ Red Lobster... I committed a massacre tonight...

@tivoupdate: And a bucket. RT @davezatz: Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp would be more appealing if they provided an announcer and scoreboard. Gluttony ftw.

Save Humpback Whales! Reduce Demand for Shrimp

2009-09-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Sign Pledge HERE

Sponsored by: Wildlife Conservation Society

Every year, about 7,000 humpback whales migrate to the coastal waters of Antongil Bay in northeastern Madagascar to breed and calve.

At the same time, large trawling boats in the bay use huge nets to sift through the sea and catch fish and other marine life. Those that target shrimp for export are particularly detrimental to the area because of their impact on the sea floor and their high level of "bycatch," the fish, turtles and marine mammals that get caught in trawlers' nets. There are often five times as many of these "bystander" victims as there are shrimp in each haul.

These and other largely unregulated operations represent a growing threat to Antongil Bay's wildlife--including the humpback whales who migrate there to calve.

How can you help humpback whales and all of the marine life that visit and live in Antongil Bay? Choose to not eat shrimp that often, or eliminate it from your diet altogether. Take the pledge today!

The Pledge:

I pledge to make a difference for humpback whales by reducing the amount of shrimp I eat or by eliminating shrimp from my diet.

By not eating shrimp, you'll lessen the worldwide demand for this product and help reduce damaging and unsustainable fishing practices. This, in turn, will make Antongil Bay, and other important marine ecosystems, more hospitable for whales and all marine life.

Note: If you already do not eat shrimp, pledge to share this action with at least one person and ask them to help us protect ocean wildlife too!

Sign Pledge HERE

Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp = Endless Destruction : (

2009-09-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

Endless Shrimp

Andre explains why ShrimpSuck.org: "You're just not connecting the dots"

2009-09-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Andre explains why ShrimpSuck.org from Wallace J. Nichols on Vimeo.

Stop the Net

2009-09-02T11:58:00.001-07:00

Impact of the Shrimp Industry on Marine Biodiversity

2009-08-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

Mangrove destruction threatens food supply

2009-08-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

Much of coastal Africa's food supply is being threatened by the destruction of swampy mangrove forests, NASA scientists warn.

The groves are being destroyed by pollution, real estate development, and deforestation necessary to sustain large-scale commercial shrimp farming, Lola Fatoyinbo, an environmental scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Friday in a release.

The groves are essential breeding grounds for fish and shellfish in tropical African countries such as Mozambique and Madagascar, she said.

Satellite studies conducted by Fatoyinbo and her team show more than half of coastal Africa's mangrove forests have disappeared in the last 50 years, with a third of them disappearing in the last 20 years alone.

Mangrove forests are important for rice farming, fishing, timber, firewood and aqua culture in coastal Africa, with some nations increasingly depending on them for eco-tourism, she said.

The large, thick root systems of mangroves process large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, protect against erosion and are a key defense against severe storms, Fatoyinbo said.

NYT: Skip the Shrimp

2009-07-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

LETTERS

Skip the Shrimp

Published: July 29, 2009

To the Editor:

'Cheap,' by Ellen Ruppel Shell: Nothing for Nothing (July 19, 2009)

Shrimp farming, used by both Ellen Ruppel Shell, the author, and Laura Shapiro, the reviewer, in the review of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” (July 19) as an example of the hidden costs of cheap food, certainly has its drawbacks. In this case, however, the alternative is definitely not environmentally benign. Bottom trawling for wild shrimp is immensely destructive to habitats of many other species, and incidental bycatch, which is typically discarded dead back into the ocean, is often a source of mortality for other valuable fish. I am all for including environmental impacts in calculating the real costs of human activities, but in this case the alternative, wild shrimp, is no bargain either.

MICHAEL DAGG
New Orleans

Mangrove Action Day is July 26th

2009-07-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

[from the Mangrove Action Project]

The Mangrove Action Project wishes to lend full support to the plans and actions of all network members for Global Action on 26 July 2009. MAP staff and volunteers based in the Seattle area will be attending the 35th Annual Ballard SeafoodFest on 25-26 July, tabling at this popular Seattle event and talking with consumers about the problems of shrimp farming worldwide.

MAP will be promoting our "Shrimp Less, Think More" Consumer Awareness Campaign.

We ask that you and/or your organizations please join us all in a global protest against the ongoing losses of the mangrove forest ecosystems and the local communities that depend upon the mangroves for their lives and livelihoods. Please send MAP your regional or local plans for actions that are meant to commemorate this international Day for the Mangroves! MAP would like to again share your plans and ideas with our global network. We look forward to hearing from you soon in this regard!

For more details, contact mangroveap@olympus.net

FUNDECOL Initiates Celebrations for International Day for the Defense of Mangrove Ecosystems:

In Muisne, FUNDECOL is planning several activities for the July 26, international day for the defense of mangrove ecosystems, including a massive mangrove reforestation, agro-ecological fairs, art competitions involving murals and contests, typical local foods and marimba, among other activities. More than 700 people from communities of Bolivar, Daul, Chamanga, Bilsa, stains, Bunche and other user communities of tropical wetland forest and mangrove ecosystem, students of colleges, schools and universities in the province and Guangzhou, and other volunteers, foundations and organizations working to benefit the community at the national level will participate.

Background on Mangrove Action Day:

The plan to make this call to action arose during the In the Hands of the Fishers Workshop held in Forteleza, Brazil in early 2003. The workshop attendees came from Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia and Guatemala. The IHOF mainly focused on the issues surrounding mangrove and salt flats endangered by expansion of the shrimp farm industry, as well as strategies to help halt the continued expansion of these shrimp farm ventures. It was brought up during this workshop that an international campaign involving local fisherfolk should be undertaken where participating NGOs and local community representatives organize their own local events on the same day, thus linking these local events with each other to make an international movement or action.

July 26th was chosen because of its existing significance for the movement in Latin America led by Red Manglar. July 26th has been called the "Day of the Mangrove," commemorating that day in 1998 when a Greenpeace activist from Micronesia, Hayhow Daniel Nanoto, died of a heart attack while involved in a massive protest action led by FUNDECOL and Greenpeace, International. During this action the local community of Muisne joined the NGOs in dismantling an illegally placed shrimp pond in an attempt to restore this damaged mangrove zone back to its former state. Since Hayhow's death, FUNDECOL and others have commemorated this day as a day to remember and to take renewed action to Save the Mangroves!

With no Greenpeace ship in sight on the horizon, we decided that the fishermen form cooperative flotillas to protest the destructive expansion of shrimp farming in their areas. This call to got positive responses from Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, Nigeria, Europe and the USA. And it looks like momentum is building globally for an annual commemoration of July 26th as Mangrove Action Day, with some groiups organizing teach-ins, some mangrove tree planting, wetland clean-ups, protests and letter writing.

The Shrimp Suck Song!

2009-07-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

New Release by Mark Holmes and the Institute for Ocean Literacy

Listen to it HERE

SHRIMP SUCK
Lyrics and Music by Mark Holmes

Everyone in my school
Is just a little shrimp
We’re decapodic runners
And arthropodic wimps
We’re covered up in fingernails
And ugly as can be
Sometimes we swim backwards
Makes it difficult to see
We’re scavengers and cannibals
We eat toxins in the muck
Shrimp suck

We're drifters out of Texas
We come from broken mangrove homes
We’re wanted dead or alive
By anything with bones
We're wanted in the US
And we’re big time in Japan
So, we’re chased both day and night
By the trawls of that shrimp man
But our value's sinking down
And our mercury's rising up
Shrimp suck

Well, he finally traps us in his mesh
I can’t believe my eyes
There’s mud and silt everywhere
And starfish fill the skies
We’re all as flat as flounders now
And the reef’s been torn to bits
The seahorses are galloping
They’re running from the blitz
Though we’re the target species
Everyone gets stuck
Shrimp suck

For every pound of shrimp
There must be twenty pounds of friends
Few survive the shrimper's net
We're almost all condemned
So, keep this all in your mind
When that menu's in your hand
Do right by the ocean
Cut your shrimp demand
Tell them sushi chefs
They're all out of luck
Shrimp suck!

© 2009 Mark Holmes. All rights reserved.

Shrimp Bycatch from the Past

2009-07-08T19:12:00.001-07:00

NOAA photo archive of shrimp bycatch from 1969

see photos HERE

Shrimp as Commodity and Shrimp Futures Trading?

2009-07-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

When you realize that shrimp are traded on the international market as a commodity, like oil, wheat, copper, etc and not treated like animals with a huge, nasty ecological footprint caused by fishing or farming them, you can begin to understand why the issues related to our #1 seafood are so hard to deal with. Think twice before you eat shrimp.

FAO Commodity Trade Info

FAO Global study of shrimp fisheries: "Shrimp is now the most important internationally traded fishery commodity in terms of value."

Shrimp futures trading?

Rolling Stone on market manipulation and "The Great American Bubble Machine"

The Ocean Project: Skip the shrimp cocktail

2009-07-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Much of the world's shrimp fishing industry is extremely wasteful, with an average of more than five pounds of bycatch killed and discarded "less valuable" sea creatures – for every pound of shrimp brought to port. And shrimp farming typically relies on unsustainable industrial practices that can be damaging to both coastal ecosystems and human health.

Read more HERE

Suspicious Shrimp

2009-06-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

"Whether dipped in cocktail sauce at a party, sizzling in butter at a tapas bar, or topping a salad on a lunch break, shrimp has become the most popular seafood in the United States. The typical American eats three-and-a-half pounds of shrimp a year – surpassing even canned tuna, our long time former favorite.

Driving this surge in the consumption of shrimp is a method of intensive production that began expanding in the 1970s. Rather than being caught at sea, large quantities of shrimp are grown in man-made ponds containing a mix of ocean and fresh water along the coasts of Southeast Asia and South or Central America. Unfortunately, this industrial-scale shrimp production, often with hefty doses of antibiotics and pesticides, creates a series of food safety concerns.

The negative effects of eating industrially produced shrimp may include neurological damage from ingesting chemicals such as endosulfans, an allergic response to penicillin residues or infection by an antibiotic-resistant pathogen such as E. coli."

Read more from FWW HERE

Clean pot-caught shrimp

2009-06-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Compare this to the ocean-destroying bottom trawling approach. If you are going to eat shrimp, look for the good stuff.

Unedited US bottom trawling reality

2009-06-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

"It's an amazing mixture of jellyfish, shrimp, crabs, starfish and some fish, mostly small. The crew begins the daunting job of separating the catch...the men work quickly but the baskets fill slowly...eventually, once the shrimp are separated out what remains is pushed overboard to the delight of seagulls, pelicans and porpoises following for a free meal."

Shrimp Trawlers from Space

2009-06-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

Check out the photos HERE

Whats In The Photo:

Detail from Landsat satellite image, Gulf of Mexico, Area 1, taken on 10/24/99. Individual vessels can be seen as bright spots at end of sediment trails. Other bright spots are fixed oil and gas production platforms. One sediment trail can be traced for 27 km. Assuming a standard trawling speed of 2.5 knots, sediment from this trawl is visibly persistent for nearly 6 hours. Water depth <20m.>

Shrimpers search for solutions

2009-06-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

I have been involved in developing a method of harvesting shrimp that uses no fossil fuel and does no bottom damage and has very little bi-catch. Click on stationary wing net. The established shrimp industry has tried everything to regulate out this method of harvest because it is used primarily by small scale and artisanal fishermen that sell directly to the public or home consumption there by bypassing the processing plants and seafood distributing companies. The agencies and institutions involved is fishery management will not recognized or try to promote this method of harvest, over 300 fishermen in Louisiana are using this method and are encountering resistance from the industry. How can I have this method of harvest recognized?

-Wilson J. Gaidry III

Louisiana has more owner-operated shrimp fishing vessels than any other state and possibly more than all the other states combined. This is a testimony to the success of a shrimp fishery management philosophy that allows the average citizen to be able to participate in the harvest of our marine fishery resources and is supported by Louisiana’s Right to Fish Laws. It is the purpose of the Louisiana Inshore Shrimper’s Association to protect and preserve these rights for all the citizens of Louisiana and to develop methods of harvesting shrimp to minimize environmental impact such as the stationary wingnet that uses no fossil fuel and does no bottom damage.

The Shrimp Habit

2009-06-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

The Shrimp Habit provides a powerful overview of one of the world's most tragic * and preventable ecological and human rights disasters * the shrimp industry. A quick study that will motivate any reader to take action now.

More details
The Shrimp Habit: Why It Is Devastating Our World And What You Can Do About It
By Four Arrows, Brian Ellison
Contributor Brian Ellison
Published by Trafford Publishing, 2005
ISBN 1412070643, 9781412070645
68 pages

Popular passages

... local communities come in to establish the farms, in the process destroying vital resources, draining away livelihoods, and leaving locals destitute. Land seizures, violent intimidation of local fishers, even murders are all too common.9 Indian physicist and environmental advocate Vandana Shiva once estimated that the average shrimp farm provided perhaps 15 jobs on the farm and 50 security jobs around the farm, while displacing 50,000 people through loss of land and loss of traditional fish...‎ Page 17

US shrimp trawls drowned 11,1 79 sea turtles annually, a figure recently updated by the National Academy of Sciences to 55,000.‎ Page 31

ShrimpSuck.org Viral Video Contest Winners!

2009-06-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

From dozens of excellent entries, our distinguished panel of judges have come to a conclusion on the winners of the 1st Annual ShrimpSuck.org Viral Video Contest

***1st Place: Waste Not, Shrimp Not

***Runner Up: Why Shrimp Suck

***Three Honorable Mentions:

ShrimpSuck.org: Is it Really Worth It?

ShrimpSuck.org: Sick Shrimp Video

ShrimpSuck.org: Dear Shrimp

Thanks to everyone who participated in this contest...we'll back back, bigger and better, next year.

And don't forget ShrimpSuck.org

join the OCEAN REVOLUTION!

involve - solve - evolve

http://www.oceanrevolution.org

OCEAN REVOLUTION is a global celebration to raise consciousness, empower youth, and evolve solutions for healthy oceans. To join OCEAN REVOLUTION please visit http://www.oceanrevolution.org.

OCEAN REVOLUTION es una celebración global para levantar el sentido, autorizar la juventud, y desarrollar las soluciones para los océanos sanos. Para ingresarse en la OCEAN REVOLUTION, visite: http://www.oceanrevolution.org

ShrimpSuck.org: Is it worth it?

2009-06-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

ShrimpSuck.org: Sick Shrimp Video

2009-06-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

ShrimpSuck.org: Dear Shrimp

2009-06-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

ShrimpSuck.org: Why Shrimp Suck Video

2009-05-30T22:59:00.001-07:00

ShrimpSuck.org: Waste Not, Shrimp Not

2009-05-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

Michael explains why ShrimpSuck.org

2009-05-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

Shrimpless Blog

2009-05-04T06:00:00.001-07:00

As part of its new campaign, "Shrimp Less, Think More," Mangrove Action Project recently launched a new blog: www.shrimpless.wordpress.com. The blog is a source of information about the destruction caused by imported shrimp, and includes frequent news updates, facts, consumer tips, reports, and other resources. It also is intended to build a network and community of people concerned about the issues--so we invite the comments and input from readers!

Monterey Bay Aquarium: Seahorses and Shrimp!

2009-05-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Seahorses are threatened in a number of ways. They live in coastal areas among sea grass, sponges and corals -- habitats that are vital for their survival where they hide from predators, find mates and raise their young. Often these habitats are also home to shrimp. Shrimp trawling is one of the biggest threats to seahorses, destroying important seahorse habitat and killing them as bycatch in their nets, or by dislodging them and sweeping them out to sea.

What you can do:

Shrimp is the most popular seafood item in the U.S. However there are some serious concerns with the way most shrimp are caught or farmed. By eating less shrimp and choosing options that are more sustainable, you can put your consumer dollars to work for conservation.

If you must have shrimp, look for Best Choices whenever possible. U.S. wild pink shrimp from Oregon and wild spot prawns from British Columbia have less bycatch than tropical warm-water shrimp fisheries.

To protect seahorses we must protect their habitats. You can learn more about how Marine Protected Areas--like national parks on land--can preserve seahorse habitat and prohibit collecting. We can do our part, too, by refusing to buy seahorse souvenirs.

Support responsible fishing

2009-04-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

Lack of Enforcement Leads to Call for Shrimp Embargo

2009-04-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

Exports to the United States Jeopardized

Pretoma (read more HERE)

(San José, Costa Rica - April 22, 2009)--The Costa Rican organization Pretoma is requesting that the United States government deny sea turtle protection certification to Costa Rica's shrimp trawl fleet and implement an embargo on all Costa Rican shrimp exports. A letter requesting an embargo was submitted on April 13 to the State Department in Washington, D.C. and is based on Law 169-102, section 609, which states that foreign fishing countries desiring access to the U.S. market must practice a comparable standard of sea turtle protection as done in the United States, something Costa Rica does not do.
Picture: Diagram of a TED inside a shrimp trawl net

The law, enforced since May 1, 1996, allows the U.S. to impose an embargo on the exportation of shrimp from countries whose shrimp trawl fleets do not use the Turtle Excluder Device (TED), a simple apparatus that allows sea turtles to escape from trawl nets without effecting the operations profitability. Costa Rica has suffered three trade embargoes since 1999, the last one in May, 2006 after the industry lost access to the United States' lucrative market for one year.

In the letter, Pretoma details an analysis of the procedures utilized for the sanctioning of shrimp trawl vessels that do not use TEDs, and points out how Incopesca, Costa Rica's fishing regulations entity, has demonstrated time and again its inability to make shrimpers trawlers comply with national legislation that mandates their use.

Over the last five years, 29 shrimp trawls have been caught red handed either fishing without TEDs, using tampered TEDs, or with other serious technical problems that compromise their effectiveness to free turtles, this according to information obtained through Incopesca and the Coast Guard National Service (SNG). In addition, over this same time several boats have been caught twice without their TEDs. None of the aforementioned cases has resulted in a sanction of any kind and all boats have been permitted to continue operating.

"The national shrimp trawl industry doesn't only ignore TED legislation, it also flagrantly violates legislation that prohibits fishing in marine protected areas", said Randall Arauz, Pretoma's president. He went on to denounce "without a national entity willing to enforce the country's sea turtle protection laws, we're left with no choice but to turn to nations that do", meaning the United States.

Pretoma concludes that Costa Rica does not implement its sea turtle conservation laws, there by causing the death of thousands of turtles each year that drown in shrimp trawl nets. Furthermore, the organization recommends that the U. S. State Department place a trade embargo on Costa Rican imported shrimp until fishing authorities demonstrate the political will to change this situation.

"Costa Rica has the option", explained Todd Steiner, executive director for the TURTLE ISLAND RESTORATION NETWORK (TIRN), "it can make the shrimp trawl industry adopt the best practices to save sea turtles, or it can loose the privilege to sell it's shrimp to the United States".

Additional information:

Costa Rica's shrimp trawl fleet numbers 55 boats and captures 15,000 sea turtles per year, the majority of which die by forced emersion

90% of captured sea turtles are olive ridleys (Lepidochelys olivácea) and 10% are green turtles (Chelonia mydas)

TED use reduces turtle capture by 97% without effecting the amount of shrimp caught

The U.S. government must annually certify the shrimp trawl fleets of those countries wanting to export shrimp to the U.S. to ensure they properly use the TED

Shrimp trawl fishermen have received TED use training on repeated occasions from government agencies, shrimp fishermen from Georgia (USA), and national NGOs.

For more information:

Pretoma
Tel (506) 2241 5227
Fax (506) 2236 6017
email: info@pretoma.org; andy@pretoma.org
website: www.pretoma.org

###

Joshua says: ShrimpSuck.org

2009-04-20T13:38:00.000-07:00

Diver McGuire says: ShrimpSuck.org

2009-04-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

Don’t Eat the Turtles When You Order the Shrimp

2009-04-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Headed to the supermarket to pick up some fish filets for dinner? Or perhaps you’re going to your favorite restaurant to dine on some scrumptious seafood this evening?

How would you like your dinner choices to give your favorite turtle a leg up in the Great Turtle Race? Better yet, wouldn’t it be great if your evening menu helped turtles all over the globe (and seabirds, and fish, and marine mammals, and sharks)?

A quick search on the Internet, or even a text message – if that’s more your speed – can have great results. When it comes to seafood, knowledge is power: use what you know to choose seafood that conserves marine life and habitat.

Read More HERE

South Carolina shrimp trawling and bycatch

2009-04-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

all of this bycatch/bykill and shrimp is "a little more than enough to break even"

is this a good way to get seafood? do you want to be a part of this? is there a better way?

VIDEO Bycatch in shrimp nets

2009-04-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

For every kilo of shrimp netted, up to 20 kilos of other sea creatures are needlessly killed. It's called bycatch and it makes shrimp trawling one of the most wasteful methods of fishing harming the marine environment and also damaging commercial fisheries. Earth Report travels to Mexico and the Philippines where the industry is trialling new nets and new practices that aim to drastically reduce the bycatch from shrimp fishing. Ask for ZERO bycatch shrimp if you must eat it.

Eat less shrimp (or none at all!)

2009-04-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

Woman calls 911 over lack of shrimp in fried rice

Wed Apr 8, 12:58 am ET

HALTOM CITY, Texas – A woman called 911 to report she didn't get as much shrimp as she wanted in her fried rice at a Texas restaurant.

Haltom City police on Tuesday released the taped emergency call, in which the customer is heard telling the dispatcher, "to get a police officer up here, what has to happen?"

The customer also says: "He didn't even put extra shrimp in there."

The upset customer had left the Fort Worth-area restaurant when an officer arrived Monday afternoon.

Restaurant workers say the woman had been denied a refund after leaving with her order, then returning to complain.

Cook June Lee says nothing was wrong with the meal, and that "some customers are happy. Some are not."

___
Information from Fort Worth Star-Telegram & KDFW-TV:
http://www.star-telegram.com & http://www.myfoxdfw.com

2009-04-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

From Publishers Weekly

"In this whirlwind, worldwide tour of fisheries, Grescoe (The Devil's Picnic) whiplashes readers from ecological devastation to edible ecstasy and back again.

In disturbing detail, he depicts the turbid and murky Chesapeake Bay, where, with overharvested oysters too few to do their filtering job, fish are infested with the cell from hell, a micro-organism that eats their flesh and exposes their guts.

He describes how Indian shrimp farms treated with pesticides, antibiotics and diesel oil are destroying protective mangroves, ecosystems and villages, and portrays the fate of sharks—a collapsing fishery—finned for the Chinese delicacy shark-fin soup: living sharks have their pectoral and dorsal fins cut from their bodies with heated metal blades.

The sharks are kicked back into the ocean, alive and bleeding; it can take them days to die.

But these horrific scenes are interspersed with delectable meals of succulent Portuguese sardines with fat-jeweled juices or a luscious breakfast of bluefin tuna sashimi, cool and moist... halfway between a demi-sel Breton butter and an unctuous steak tartare; the latter is a dish that, due to the fish's endangered status, Grescoe decides he won't enjoy again.

The book ends on a cautiously optimistic note: scientists know what steps are needed to save the fisheries and the ocean; we just need the political will to follow through. Grescoe provides a helpful list of which fish to eat: no, never, depends, sometimes and absolutely, always." (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Read more about the book Bottomfeeder HERE

Grist.org on seafood

2009-04-08T16:12:00.001-07:00

"“The simple fact is, if you’re eating cheap shrimp today, it almost certainly comes from a turbid, pesticide- and antibiotic-filled, virus-laden pond in the tropical climes of one of the world’s poorest nations.” Lest anyone think otherwise, these factory farms contribute to poverty in the nations that house them, as Grescoe demonstrates; they privatize and cut down highly productive mangrove forests that once sustained fishing communities, leaving fetid dead zones in their wake."

Read more HERE

Why do shrimp suck?

2009-04-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

Some good folks answer that question:

Shrimp Suck Aussie Style

2009-03-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

Wild caught shrimp and tailnets VIDEO

2009-03-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

Wild caught shrimp and tailnets from DocNO Productions on Vimeo.

More shrimp farmers going organic

2009-03-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

Mangrove Action Project Editor's Note: The use of the term "organic" when applied to shrimp farm in the following article needs to be further analyzed, because too often the word is misused. Though "organic" may signify that there are no pesticides or antibiotics used in the particular shrimp farm operation, there still is the matter of what these shrimp farmers are feeding their shrimp, and a diet that includes wild caught fish should not be labeled as "organic."

Also, "organic" may still not resolve other major problems inherent in the shrimp farm industry, such as mangrove clearing, siting ponds in the inter-tidal zone, disease spread and human rights problems, which still plague the overall industry. Not long ago shrimp disease spread rapidly in the Cau Ma region of Vietnam, bankrupting many shrimp farmers who had risked all to enter into the promising shrimp farm race.

9 March 2009

By Michael Loubet

Some shrimp farms in the Mekong Delta Province of Ca Mau may go organic this year in an effort to improve their quality and hygiene to meet export requirements. Demand for Vietnamese shrimp has been falling recently as a result of the global financial crisis.

Seafood processing workshops have been running at just 25 per cent capacity. This is due to the low numbers of shrimp being produced in Vietnam's shrimp ponds due to farmers abandoning the activity last year out of lack of capital caused by very low shrimp market prices, VietNamNet reports.

According to the Ca Mau Department for Agriculture and Rural Development, last month only 300 out of 1,300 ha (23 per cent) of the water area reserved for shrimp hatching were seen to have shrimp, while the other areas have been either left idle or are farming other kinds of aquatic products.

One solution available to farmers may be to turn to organic shrimp farming. Currently, expenses per kilogramme of shrimp are at VND 70,000/kg (USD 4/kg), while the sale price is just VND 50,000 (USD 2.9). Organic shrimp, however, fetches a higher price that may make farming shrimp once again profitable for Mekong Delta producers.

Farmers would first have to adjust to more regulations and stipulations on farm site selection, protection of local ecosystems, chemicals restrictions, organic feed use and organic processing standards, among ohters.

"With food hygiene and safety standards becoming more stringent in global markets, Ca Mau's aquaculture farms adopted organic farming several years ago," commented the deputy director of the province's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Nguyen Thong Nhan.

Ngoc Hien District-based Breeding Farm No 184 is the only farm so far to receive a certificate for organic shrimp farming from the the Swiss-based Institute for Market Ecology (IMO), VNS reports.

With growing demand and high prices for organic shrimp globally, many farmers are seriously considering making the switch to organic standards only to be dissuaded by the higher production costs. A shortage of organic shrimp for export then results.

Source: FIS
http://www.fis.com/fis/worldnews/worldnews.asp?l=e&country=&monthyear=&day=&id=31643&ndb=1&df=0

via : ICSF
www.icsf.net

ShrimpSuck.org Viral Video Contest!

2009-03-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Tell us why "shrimp suck" in a video of up to one minute in length and win a Flip Video camera (www.theflip.com)

Post your video by June 1st, 2009. Awards will be announced to the world on World Ocean Day '09...June 8th.

The research is clear, bottom trawling for shrimp and most shrimp farming is about as bad for the ocean as a human activity can get. In some places there's 20 pounds of bycatch (animals like sea turtles, young sharks, fish, and crabs) for every pound of shrimp caught. Many shrimp farms are created by destroying mangrove forests and wetlands.

But most eco-minded people still have no idea how bad shrimp are for our coasts and oceans. Meanwhile, shrimp remain the number one seafood in the US, and their price comes nowhere close to reflecting their true cost.

Upload your video of one minute or less in length to youtube.com, add keyword "shrimpsuck.org" so we can find it, and send an email with your video's URL to shrimpsuck@me.com

There will be awards for best, funniest and most viewed videos,reviewed by our expert panel of judges.

Get creative and tell use why you don't eat shrimp, show us why shrimp suck or share ideas about the best alternatives and the folks doing things right. For background information, visit www.shrimpsuck.org

And share this email and your soon-to-be-award-winning video with everyone you know who cares about the ocean.

For our ocean,

The Ocean Revolution Team

www.oceanrevolution.org
www.shrimpsuck.org

Orion Magazine: SHRIMP: the truth

2009-03-03T07:38:00.001-08:00

All You Can Eat: A journey through a seafood fantasy

BY JIM CARRIER

Read this important article HERE

"One story from the book I cannot shake involved Korunamoyee Sardar, a Bangladeshi woman who, on November 7, 1990, joined a protest against a new shrimp farm near Harin Khola. She was shot in the head, cut into pieces, and thrown into a Bangladesh river. A monument stands where she was murdered. It reads: “Life is struggle, struggle is life.”

Red Lobster, which buys 5 percent of the world’s shrimp, is Bangladesh’s biggest U.S. customer. The restaurant did not respond to repeated requests for an interview."

God Hates Shrimp?

2009-02-27T12:25:00.000-08:00

God Hates Shrimp WEBSITE

Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are anabomination before the Lord, just as gays are an abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring all of God's law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver's and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye's shall be cleansed. The name of Bubba shall be anathema. We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants.

Leviticus 11:9-12 says:
⁹ These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
¹⁰ And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
¹¹ They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
¹² Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Deuteronomy 14:9-10 says:
⁹ These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:
¹⁰ And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

Shrimp bottom trawl fishery in East Indian Ocean not sustainable

2009-02-19T22:49:00.000-08:00

19 Feb 2009 - Web Exclusive: worldfishing.net

A recent Friend of the Sea audit at the Indian bottom trawling fishery for Metapenaeus species (king, brown and pink prawns) has shown the fishery’s non compliance with Friend of the Sea sustainability criteria.

The audited fishery consists of 14m vessels towing trawl nets of up to 140m on the seabed at depths of 40-60m, 8-20km off the coast. A representative fishery was audited on site, however, given the nature of the non compliances, they can be applied to the whole East Indian Ocean fishery similar and homogeneous with the audited one, including freezer trawlers – up to 23m – which operate at depths of 100m or more.

While some data on the stocks status was available for the 80s and the 90s, suggesting overexploitation to be already occurring at the time, almost no updated information is available and FAO considers (in its World Review of Marine Captures, 2006) the shrimp stocks in the area as overexploited.

According to the on-site auditors “no supporting record or data is available with boat owners or company representative to verify the level of discard” and while it is generally accepted that the overall level of by-catch is lower than freezer trawlers, official research has been carried out in recent years, evidencing how trawlers operating near the coast are responsible of high levels of turtle mortality.

An estimated 50,000 endangered sea turtles are drowned by the shrimp trawlers in India every year. Deepsea shark by-catch is also a major issue in the trawl fishery and the Indian bottom trawl fishery accounts to approximately 60% of the landings. An estimated 70 million per year are caught mainly by the shark finning industry. Lack of reporting from the audited fishery does not allow for verification. From interviews with the fishermen, the level of discard could be around 10-15% which is higher than the maximum allowed by the Friend of the Sea standards.

The on-site Auditors reported that TEDs (Turtle Excluder Devices) are gradually being introduced. “While this might be evidence that turtle by-catch is an issue with the fishery, Friend of the Sea considers this initiative to be significant in lowering the potential impact of the fishery in the forthcoming years,” comments Dr Bray, director of Friend of the Sea. “If the fishery requests a new audit in the future, we would expect as a minimum TEDs use to be mandatory and enforced and independent onboard observers reporting on any endangered species mortality.”

Efforts to diversify fishing activities and divert them from shrimp to fish catching are in place and this could lead to a decrease in fishing effort. “Introduction of Global Position Systems and closed season for the fishery are also tools which, if properly used and duly enforced, might help in future years the fishery to be found compliant with sustainability criteria,” concludes Dr Bray. “We hope the current non compliance result will further motivate the fishery to fasten the speed of management improvements.”

Deﬁning and estimating global marine ﬁsheries bycatch

2009-02-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

"Bycatch is thus more than 20.8 times greater than the catch of shrimp in deeper waters and 67 times greater than the shrimp catch in shallower waters."

"For the 2000–2003 period, the estimate of 10 lb (by weight) of bycatch for every pound of shrimp caught was deemed applicable to the Mexican shrimp industry."

"Those data imply that, overall, the [Philippine] shrimp trawl ﬂeet was catching 5.4 percent shrimp and 94.6 percent bycatch.during the same period, so bycatch represented at least 51.4 percent of the total marine catch."

"Venezuela’s shrimp trawl ﬂeet is estimated to generate 9 kg of bycatch species per 1 kg of shrimp catch, with industrial ﬁsheries having a rate of 94 percent bycatch while artisanal ﬁsheries have rates varying from 47 to 90 percent of the catch"

"Although 30 percent of the shrimp trawl ﬁshery landed catch in Ghana is shrimp, the mean ratio of non-shrimp: shrimp catch overall was reported to be 23:1 during
the day, 9:1 at night."

Davies et al. In Press. Deﬁning and estimating global marine ﬁsheries bycatch. Marine Policy.

Why I’ll Never Eat Shrimp Again

2009-02-05T21:59:00.000-08:00

Today was our first lecture of the semester. To say the least, it was inspirational. Wallace J. Nichols, arguably the most well known ocean conservationist on planet ocean, spoke for 2 hours and 45 minutes about the finite conditions of the ocean and how we are all affecting it. For those of you who may not know him, you can see him in Dicaprio’s film “The 11th Hour”. It was a moving presentation and by the end I had already outlined a few ideas in my head about conservation and preservation.

Read More HERE

A Glance at the Global Rise of Shrimp

2009-01-26T18:14:00.000-08:00

Shrimp is now the most important internationally traded fishery commodity in terms of value. A new global study on the development and present status of shrimp fisheries analyses the global impact on the industry.

The recent world shrimp catch is about 3.4 million tonnes per year, with Asia as the most noteworthy area for shrimp fishing. World production of shrimp, both captured and farmed, is about 6 million tonnes, of which about 60 percent enters the world market.

In many tropical developing countries, it is the most valuable fishery export; the employment aspect is also significant. The economic importance of shrimp needs to be reconciled with considerable concern about the environmental impacts of shrimp fisheries, says the FAO Fisheries Technical Paper, Global study of shrimp fisheries.

Observations are made about many aspects of shrimp fisheries. These include: the development of shrimp fishing; structure of the shrimp fisheries; target species; catch/ effort; economic contributions; trade; bycatch; fuel; biological aspects; impacts on the physical environment; impacts of large-scale shrimp fishing on small-scale fisheries; management; enforcement; research; data reporting; and the impacts of shrimp farming on shrimp fishing.

A major conclusion of the study is that there are mechanisms, instruments and models to enable effective mitigation of many of the difficulties associated with shrimp fishing, taking a precautionary and ecosystem approach to fisheries. The inference is that, with an appropriate implementation capacity, shrimp fishing, including shrimp trawling, is indeed manageable.

In many countries, however, weak agencies dealing with fisheries, lack of political will and inadequate legal foundations cause failures in the management of shrimp fisheries. The report makes specific recommendations in a few key areas: the management of small-scale shrimp fisheries, capacity reduction; and access to the fishery.

The ten countries selected are: Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Madagascar, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States of America. The results of the country reviews are combined with specialized studies on important topics related to shrimp fisheries to produce the major findings of the overall study.

The full report is available at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/i0300e/i0300e.pdf

Source: The Fish Site
http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/8953/a-glance-at-the-global-rise-of-shrimp

FAO Global study of shrimp fisheries

2009-01-13T21:42:00.000-08:00

The recent world shrimp catch is about 3.4 million tonnes per year, with Asia as the most noteworthy area for shrimp fishing. World production of shrimp, both captured and farmed, is about 6 million tonnes, of which about 60 percent enters the world market. Shrimp is now the most important internationally traded fishery commodity in terms of value. In many tropical developing countries, it is the most valuable fishery export; the employment aspect is also significant. The economic importance of shrimp needs to be reconciled with considerable concern about the environmental impacts of shrimp fisheries.

Read the full 2008 report HERE

from the Introduction:

"On the environmental side, shrimp is strongly influenced by climatic drivers, but also often affected by coastal habitat degradation, such as the destruction of mangroves by aquaculture or of seagrass beds by illegal trawling in coastal areas. Coastal shrimp ecosystems have experienced a decrease in their average trophic level from which, shrimp, as prey, has probably benefited (resisting to collapse).

Exploiting high-biodiversity ecosystems, specialized industrial shrimp fisheries capture large quantities of bycatch, consisting to a large extent of “trash fish”. Having limited storage capacity, these fisheries have been the world champions for discarding and, despite significant improvements in the last decade, still contribute about 25 percent to world discards.

Little progress has been made in many countries to manage these multispecies fisheries more efficiently. Of the bycatch species, turtles have caused major problems; shrimp fisheries are an example here of the difficulty and also of the success in introducing bycatch reduction devices (BRDs). Last but not least, the use of trawls leads to an ecological impact on the superficial fauna and on the benthos, the extent and reversibility of which remain controversial.

Given both the economic and ecological importance of shrimp resources and the numerous concerns associated with shrimp fishing, it is surprising that it has been almost two decades since the last attempt was made to examine the major issues associated with shrimp fishing in the world. At a time when conventional governance is questioned and a shift to an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) has been adopted, global shrimp fisheries are an excellent example of what should have been avoided but, also, in some areas, of what can be achieved with fishers’ collaboration."

Shrimp does not pay

2009-01-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

by MAUREEN NANDINI MITRA

It was a profitable venture in the the 1980s and 1990s. But shrimp farming, the livelihood of many in the Sunderbans, has hit a terrible low. MAUREEN NANDINI MITRA finds out why.

Read more HERE

Seafood industry highlights of 2008

2009-01-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

By Laine Welch | Capital City Weekly

Each American ate 16.3 pounds of seafood, a figure that is expected to drop as cash strapped Americans cut back on dining out. The National Restaurant Association said Americans spent 48 percent of their food budget eating out nearly six times each week.

America's seafood favorites remained the same, with shrimp, canned tuna, pollock and tilapia the top five.

Alaska's seafood message of sustainability and food safety trumped concerns over 'food miles' and 'carbon footprints' among global buyers.

Read more HERE

Sea's hidden scars

2009-01-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

Web Posted: 01/02/2009 9:29 CST

By Christopher Anderson - Express-News Originally published on Sept. 16, 2003.

Third of five parts.

GALVESTON BAY -- It is impossible at first to see any damage in the murky water around Floyd Gastian's shrimp trawler.

Ten feet below the green surface, though, Gastian's net leaves a wound so severe experts say it's as if a bulldozer scraped the sea floor clean.

Shrimp nets, and wooden weights that take them to the bottom, scour the seabed for bottom-dwelling shrimp. Little is spared in their wake: neither the fragile mud bottom that harbors young shrimp and all sorts of other marine life, nor the fish, crabs and turtles caught in the nets.

The state's coastline boasts one of the world's best breeding grounds for shrimp. But environmental damage and years of overfishing have mobilized recreational anglers and the environmental lobby alike, prompting closures of sensitive bays, limiting the inshore shrimping season, and forcing shrimpers to invest in new devices to protect other marine life.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, in its most recent calculation in 1998, estimated that shrimpers trawled 8.7 million acres of bay bottom and more than 19 million acres in deeper gulf waters, out to 19 miles. Some of the shrimp habitat was dragged repeatedly.

Whenever shrimpers are active, bay bottoms don't get a chance to rest and recover, said Tom Wagner, a natural resources specialist in the state's coastal fisheries division.

"These boats will drag the whole surface area of the bay multiple times in one season, if not in a week or a month," he said.

Scientists have compared the impact to the clear-cutting of a forest, or the conversion of a diverse landscape to a homogeneous cattle pasture.

Read more HERE

Make fishing less damaging

2008-12-27T18:30:00.000-08:00

TIMES COLONISTDECEMBER 27, 2008

For generations, bottom trawling has been a way of life for many coastal B.C. fishermen. Yet dragging, as the fishermen themselves refer to it, has come at considerable cost to the ocean floor and to many species of marine life. That's the conclusion of a report by the Ecology Action Centre, the Living Oceans Society and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

The report, titled How We Fish Matters, looked at 13 types of fishing gear and determined that bottom trawling was the worst. It resulted in more bycatch of other species, including non-food creatures such as starfish and coral, and more damage to the environment. On the other hand, diving, harpooning and the use of pots and traps were the least damaging.

...

The report's authors don't even recommend that bottom trawling be banned. The report does, however, call upon fisheries managers to "implement ecologically risk adverse strategies to minimize the impact of fishing gear on habitat and bycatch."

Reducing habitat damage is more difficult, although a lot depends on where the fishing occurs. Otter trawling for shrimp is less destructive than for groundfish, the report notes. That's because the shrimp are typically found on a muddy bottom, which is more resilient than the rock bottoms favoured by groundfish. DFO already restricts where bottom trawling occurs and the threat of snagging and losing gear on rocky bottoms also works to discourage fishing over that terrain.

Read more HERE

Toast to the Ocean

2008-12-20T16:27:00.001-08:00

LIVBLUE.org and Ocean Revolution invite you to raise a glass to the Ocean at midnight on New Years 2009.

We have much to celebrate and work towards this year.

The ocean gives us life and health, our air and climate, beauty and inspiration.

It covers most of our planet and contains the majority of life on earth.

Among our other toasts, vows, resolutions and celebrations, we’ll pledge to live like we love the ocean in the coming year.

Let us know where you'll be when you toast the ocean on new year's eve, and invite your friends to join us by raising a toast to the ocean, wherever you are!

Commercial shrimping down; fish numbers up

2008-12-14T18:26:00.000-08:00

Commentary: Croaker making a comeback

By SHANNON TOMPKINS Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 14, 2008, 3:01AM

Texas’ croaker fishery, and the tradition of croaker fishing, began sputtering in the late ’60s and early ’70s. By the late ’70s and early ’80s, the fishery was less than a shadow. It became harder and harder to catch a croaker measuring more than a few inches. And the fall “runs” had dwindled to a mere trickle.

Certainly, loss of thousands of acres of crucial estuary and oyster reef habitat in the bays hurt croaker. Juvenile croaker, like most juvenile marine fish, depend on the cover and food provided by healthy and abundant estuaries and reefs to thrive.
Changes to the bay’s hydrology and water quality also hurt croaker, just as it hurt other inshore species.
But the real killer — literally — for the fishery was the shrimp trawl.

Young croaker are particularly vulnerable to being scooped up in trawls, and when commercial shrimping efforts shot through the roof in the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of croaker died as by-catch.

In the late 1990s, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department staff estimated almost 400 million croaker were annually killed this way.
The drain on the croaker fishery was so intense that relatively few croaker lived long enough to grow to a size desirable for recreational anglers. When sampling bay fisheries using gill nets, trawls and other collection gear, TPWD coastal fisheries staff almost never encountered a croaker older than 1 year.

That’s changing, though. Today, anglers and TPWD staff are seeing increasing numbers of croaker in most bay systems, and larger fish.

The trigger for the stabilization and slow improvement of the fishery began a little more than a decade ago, when Texas implemented a limited-entry program for the commercial shrimp fishery and began buying back and retiring shrimping licenses.

Read more HERE

Aussie shrimp bycatch video

2008-12-13T17:52:00.000-08:00

A research cruise on the prawn trawler the RV Ngerin in the Spencer Gulf, South Australia. Among other things we investigated the interactions between Port Jackson sharks and the Western King prawn fishery. Missing Link Media

Watch it HERE

Farming the Sea, Costing the Earth

2008-12-12T17:43:00.000-08:00

Shrimp farming has been heralded as part of a ‘Blue Revolution’, capable of providing food whilst allowing wild stocks to recover from over-fishing. The industry has experienced spectacular growth in recent years. Today, farmed shrimp account for about one third of global consumption of shrimp, having a retail value of US$50–60 billion. Mounting evidence raises serious concerns over the environmental and economic sustainability, as well as social equity, of large parts of the shrimp farming industry.

Read the 2003 report HERE

Call for Shrimping/Farming Video

2008-12-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

We have the opportunity to have a short, compelling PSA made about the negative impacts of mainstream shrimp trawling and farming (it will be good, different and virally propogated on the web).

We are looking for strong royalty-free video footage and images of bottom trawling, bycatch (sea turtles, young sharks,etc), habitat destruction and shrimp farming

We'll make the PSA available to everyone to use freely once it's complete.

Let us know if you have images to share or know someone who might.

Review of ‘Stolen Harvest’ by Vandana Shiva

2008-12-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

Dec 10th, 2008 by James Murray-White

The next area Shiva turns to is the ocean, where on the Indian coast large shrimp trawlers have arrived to supply the appetites of Western elites who fancy prawns. As they scrape the ocean floor with dragnets, the ships annually kill off as many as 150,000 turtles living on the seabed. They also pull up loads of fish not suitable for sale, which are dumped back into the sea either dead or dying as “bycatch” that can be as much as a third of the weight of the total sellable catch.

Where shrimp are not caught wild, they are bred in saline aquaculture pools that leach into the underground aquifers locals rely on for drinking water, and the coastal farms destroy acres and acres of mangrove trees that usually safeguard the seaside villages from heavy winds.

"The environmental destruction caused by intensive shrimp farming is one of the major factors for its spread in Third World countries, even though the main consumers of shrimp live in affluent countries. In country after country where commercial shrimp fishing has been tried, it has proven unsustainable. For this reason, this industry is known as a ‘rape and run’ industry.”

Read more HERE

SHRIMPSUCK.org

#OccupyTheOcean

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Shrimp boats a major culprit in Gulf sea turtle deaths, group says

BY RENEE SCHOOF

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Shrimpers kill too many turtles in Gulf of Mexico

Many boats don't have the equipment required by law that will help them avoid turtles.

Thousands of Gulf Sea Turtles Killed by Shrimp Trawls

Posted: 6/22/11 11:51 AM ET

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Oyos Saroso H.N. , The Jakarta Post , Bandarlampung | Fri, 10/16/2009 2:51 PM | The Archipelago

Why shrimp suck TWITTER style

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