Can Crustacean Qualms be Quelled?

Ethical concerns about shrimp consumption

Last week, I heard an oceanographer on the radio discussing the many dire problems we’re causing in the oceans. She discussed acidification and changing temperatures, both caused by increased carbon in the atmosphere, and the lethal cocktail of pollutants we produce that flood into the oceans. For instance, nutrient pollution from farm and lawn runoff leads to eutrophication and creates dead zones. We dump hazardous substances into the oceans including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and persistent organic pollutants, like DDT. There’s also the rising mass of plastics in the ocean. And there’s noise pollution from our ships, industry, and fossil fuel extraction, that impacts whales’ communication of course but also kills plankton . I’d heard much of this before but then the scientist on the radio said something that startled me “People need to stop eating shrimp and tuna.” It was one of those moments when the rest of the world receded and my thoughts swirled around me. Not eat shrimp? Say it isn’t so!!! Please no, not shrimp.

I’ve had a love affair with shrimp all my life. And although I am mainly vegetarian, I will now and again indulge in a plate full of shrimp. Fried shrimp by the seaside is my favorite, if you want to know, but I enjoy sharing a shrimp dish with friends when ordering take away too. It’s a good bridging food with my carnivorous leaning friends. I’ve always justified eating shrimp through the belief that shrimp probably don’t suffer much. On the other hand, one shrimp meal is responsible for the death of number of creatures. Tricky. But the pro-shrimp / anti-shrimp pendulum wedged into an anti-shrimp stance when I heard the radio oceanographer explain that for every pound of shrimp that is netted, ten times as much marine life is thrown back into the ocean - dead. This is known as bycatch and shrimp has one of the highest bycatch rates of all. It’s like cutting down an orchard to harvest a bushel of apples. Time for a shrimp dive. Here’s what I found out.

Wild tropical shrimp account for an astonishing 20% of all internationally traded seafood. That’s a big industry. Roughly 900,000 fishermen operate 400,000 trawlers. Shrimp are bottom dwellers and fishermen have been using bottom trawlers for at least 120 years to bring the crustaceans to the surface. The nets are huge and held open by doors that can weigh several tons, while the net itself is weighted down with steel balls. As the net is dragged across the ocean floor it scoops up or knocks over everything in its path. Corals, sea-grasses, and the sediment on the ocean floor are all disturbed, destroying ecosystems that can take centuries and even millennia to repair.

And because shrimp are so small, the nets used to catch them catch everything else as well. Shrimp only account for 5-12%, by weight, of the catch. The rest includes turtles, small whales, dolphins, porpoises, dugongs, sharks, sea horses and so forth. Bottom trawling is close to wiping out the world’s most endangered marine porpoise, dangerously depletes red snapper and other fish populations, and dramatically messes with the ocean floor’s nutrient cycles. Trawling is perhaps the most destructive of fishing practices for marine life numbers as well as for habitat destruction.

There are more sustainable ways to carry out bottom trawling. There can be a hole at the back end of the net so fish and even whales can swim out. And there are turtle excluder devices, whatever that means. Such practices have managed to halt the decay of shrimp catch in Australia and the US and 2 fisheries in Mexico. In the rest of the world, including most of Mexico, shrimp catches are undergoing rapid declines. To my surprise, there are now 29 shrimp fisheries that have been certification as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Products carrying the blue MSC oval must prove that their techniques leave stocks productive and healthy, that the fishing techniques leave the habitat intact so other species can thrive, and that the management complies with regulations such as worker’s rights and environmental regulations. The first fishery to achieve accreditation was for The North Sea brown shrimp fishery which accounts for 90% of the North Sea catch. The company was accredited in 2017 through implementing a harvest control system and larger meshes on their nets to reduce bycatch. The shrimpers in that region have been harvesting there for decades, and sell to a relatively eco-conscious community, so they already knew a lot about sustainable practices. However, the certification has tightened up their good practices and the company has committed to further improving their practices and monitoring the underlying ecosystems. I was really surprised, and delighted, to learn that we can purchase ethically harvested wild shrimp.

But there is a darker side to the shrimp story. 55% of global shrimp supplies come from aquaculture farms, raising about 10 billion dollars a year. Shrimp farms are built in coastal areas and have destroyed between 5% and 80% of mangrove forests in Thailand, Equador, Indonesia, China, Mexico, and Vietnam in the past 50 years. Mangroves are exceptionally unique ecosystems being composed of plants that were once land plants that have now migrated to the shallows of the sea where they’ve adapted to tolerate salt water. The calm waters around the matrix of mangrove roots provides critical marine nurseries for various species such as snapper, tilapia, sea bass, oysters and crabs. Importantly for today, mangroves sequester more carbon per given area than any other ecosystem on earth. Shrimp farming destroys mangroves both by direct conversion to shrimp farms and also through the pollutants released by nearby shrimp farms.

Nutrient heavy runoff from shrimp farms leads to eutrophication. Banned pesticides, chemicals and antibiotics runoff cause disruption of food chains and nutrient cycles. And shrimp farms can lead to the depletion, salinisation, and contamination of ground water. Further afield ecosystem damage arises because the farmed shrimp need food, which usually is in the form of ground up fish, which can lead to the depletion of wild fish stocks.

The heavy use of banned pesticides and antibiotics, as well as other shrimp farming practices, have human health implications as well. In one study by scientists at Texas Tech University, one sample of farmed shrimp had 28 times the FDA limit of nitrofuranzone while another sample had 150 times the limit of chloramphenicol - both carcinogenic antibiotics. Packing plants for farmed fish overseas have been found to be appalling - including evidence of flies, rat hair, cockroaches, salmonella, E coli, filth and unsafe water used in ice to pack the shrimp. Shrimp is found to be more contaminated with banned chemicals, pesticides and antibiotics than any other seafood. If you think you’re safe buying shrimp because you live in a country where your food is regulated think again. In the US, for example, about 90% of shrimp is imported, of which only 2% is inspected by regulatory agencies. Shrimp accounts for 26-30% of seafood rejected for filth.

Shrimp farming is also notoriously vile in terms of its human right’s record. You may or may not be aware of the devastating stories of shrimp fishermen who have been enslaved, bought, and sold on Thai fishing vessels. A Guardian investigation found that shrimp workers were forced to endure 20 hour shifts, regular beatings, torture and even execution. Some workers have been kept at sea for years. These boats collect so called trash fish which are ground up into fish meal to provide food for farmed shrimp. The shrimp are then sold to the likes of Walmart, Costco, Tesco, Aldi and Morrisons. When this story broke in 2014, the Thai government introduced a series of reforms. Sadly, a 2018 followup investigation found that the reforms were mainly cosmetic and the torturous working conditions continued unabated. Sadly, such horrific working conditions are also occurring on other countries’ shrimping boats.

Luckily, there are two farmed shrimp certification boards: Naturland and The Aquaculture Stewardship Council. Both ensure that the farms do no use forced labor and prohibit the use of antibiotics. Naturland is more strict prohibiting the use of pesticides and disinfectants also requiring that shrimp food comes from sustainably caught fish.

Having learned some of the impacts of shrimping, I know I’ll be reducing my shrimp intake. And I certainly don’t want to eat farmed shrimp of any kind as the soup in which the farmed shrimp live sounds vile to me. But I’m very happy to learn that MSC certified shrimp are a relatively good ethical option. I’ll have to check with my local restaurants to see if they buy MSC shrimp, but I reckon it’ll be home cooked MSC shrimp for me. All this talk of the tastiest of crustaceans is making me hungry.