This “by-catch,” the unintended species caught and killed along with the quarry, constitutes the most serious environmental complaint against shrimp trawling in the United States. As disturbing as the sight of this loss of life is, it turns out that the largest single-species component of Abraham’s by-catch is cannonball jellyfish, which, if anything, are too common, according to Megan Westmeyer, coordinator of the South Carolina Aquarium’s Sustainable Seafood Initiative. “Studies of commercially important fin fish off the South Atlantic seaboard have shown that by-catch is not affecting those populations,” she said.
That wasn’t always the case. Until the 1990s, a boat could take as much as ten pounds of by-catch—everything from sea turtles to sea urchins—for every pound of shrimp. By adding excluding devices to their nets (essentially holes that allow unwanted animals to escape), fishermen have reduced their by-catch by more than half. Atlantic coast fishermen like Abraham have done better than that, driving their fin fish by-catch down to two pounds per pound of shrimp. Fisheries for small “cocktail” shrimp off the northern Atlantic and Pacific coasts have by-catch rates of less than one-tenth of a pound for every pound of shrimp.
Even in a perfect world, though, wild catches, which total 200 million pounds a year, will be able to supply only a fraction of the 1.4 billion pounds of shrimp Americans eat each year. The rest will inevitably come from farms. Fortunately, it seems that shrimp farmers are mending their ways. Today, most new shrimp farms are situated away from mangroves. By adding soy to feed and adopting mechanical feeding systems, food conversion ratios have dropped to about two pounds of fish for every pound of shrimp. But problems remain. Even though enforcement is spotty—only two out of 100 seafood shipments coming into the United States get inspected—FDA and EU examiners continue to find residual chloramphenicol in imported shrimp.
Captain Kerry Abraham
One pioneering company, OceanBoy Farms, is proving that shrimp can be raised sustainably. Clewiston, Florida, in the heart of sugarcane country, seems like a counterintuitive site for the head offices of a state-of-the-art aquaculture operation. For starters, the nearest drop of seawater is more than 60 miles away. The ruler-straight road leading south of town bisects undulating green fields stretching from horizon to horizon. Here and there, I pass a herd of grazing cows, or an alligator lolling in the sun on the bank of a ditch.
From the highway, OceanBoy Farms looks like a garden center—several dozen greenhouses and a cluster of modular outbuildings surrounded by an imposing chain-link fence. At the front gate, I sign a document titled “Bio-security Protocols,” then slosh through a shoe wash of germ-killing sodium hydrochlorite on my way to a station where I wash my hands in disinfectant soap. Finally, I wiggle into a white plastic bio-security suit, looking for all the world as though I’m setting out for a space walk.
By maintaining a scrupulously clean environment, OceanBoy avoids all drugs, chemicals, hormones, and preservatives. In the greenhouses, 2,000 healthy adult shrimp produce juveniles that are transferred to outdoor ponds, where they grow to market size in six months. Water is pumped from a slightly saline aquifer, and then completely recycled. The shrimp receive feed based mostly on organic soybeans. What fish protein they do get comes from tilapia that OceanBoy also raises and feeds with naturally occurring algae.
Dr. David Z. McMahon, founder and chief science officer of the seven-year-old company, expects to produce only about 4 million pounds of shrimp this year. They sell for about twice the going price—enough to make a profit. But it is technology, not seafood, that may become OceanBoy’s most important export. “We probably have a hundred scientists visit us every year from around the world,” says McMahon. “Since we have shown how shrimp can be grown in a sustainable, environmentally friendly manner away from saltwater, nearly every major new project worldwide has moved inland.”
In the company kitchen, I sample an OceanBoy shrimp. It is good-looking—deep orange and milky white—and firm-fleshed and sweet. According to McMahon, a panel of experts taking part in a blind tasting at the University of Florida’s Aquatic Food Products Lab preferred them over wild shrimp. But I miss that little wild oomph. Rick Bayless, the well-known Chicago restaurateur, has long been a fan of OceanBoy shrimp. “They have a clean, clear taste that works very well in ceviches and seafood cocktails. They take on other flavors nicely. But they don’t have the flavor of wild shrimp.”
American shrimp fishermen hope to use that distinctive flavor as their last, great hope for survival in a world awash in cheap farmed imports. Taking a page from the successful campaign of Alaska’s wild salmon fishermen, shrimpers have initiated a program aimed at convincing consumers that their catch is worth paying more for. “You have one animal swimming all its life in the ocean, eating all the wonderful things God provides. You’ve got another animal that lives in a pond, not swimming a lot, and eating man-made food, mostly soy-based,” said Eddie Gordon, executive director of Wild American Shrimp Inc., a marketing firm based in Charleston, South Carolina.
It would be hard to think up a better marketing campaign than inviting a few chefs and supermarket seafood buyers over to Kerry Abraham’s house down on the shores of St. Helena Island for some of the Frogmore stew he served me the night before we went fishing. Abraham is one of those southern cooks congenitally incapable of preparing a dish that serves fewer than 20. He moves around the kitchen with the same familiarity he displays aboard his boat: shucking just-picked ears of sweet corn, chopping links of hard sausage like a trained chef, pulling a half-dozen bags of fresh shrimp out of the fridge. A big aluminum pot on the stove wafts steam that is fragrant with a peppery boiling mixture whose ingredients Abraham coyly declines to reveal. Friends pop in. His wife, the real-life Miss Kathy, comes home from a day’s work at the doctors’ office she manages in Beaufort. The three repairmen who successfully replaced the air conditioner’s fan motor are cajoled into filling their own plates. Two big ice chests on the front porch supply enough cold canned beer for all. As the sun sets, St. Helena Sound turns the color of brushed stainless steel. Someone passes around a half-gallon of “brown likker.” The din of laughter, stories, and gossip fills the house as I head back to the kitchen for my third (or is it my fourth?) helping of what just may be the best mess of shrimp on the planet.
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