For several reasons.įirst we have productivity. You would think that bycatch would be easy to deal with since you could simply throw back what you don’t want and keep the rest. This term refers to the unwanted fish and invertebrates that are caught along with the target species. They are not free-swimming animals like their relatives the krills, famous as the main staple of baleen whales.īenthic otter trawling is perhaps the single most destructive type of fishing method when it comes to " bycatch". The shrimp you eat are benthic animals that live among grass beds, coral reefs and sandy bottoms. An otter trawl may have an opening up to sixty feet wide as it scours the ocean bottom picking up anything in its path. This is a fine-meshed net dragged behind a boat which skims the ocean bottom in hopes of scooping up as much shrimp as possible in each pass. Most shrimp fishing is done using an otter trawl. How easy it seemed: Drag a net for a while along the bottom and pull up a few thousand pounds of ready to eat crustaceans. I’m thinking back to the shrimp boat scenes in the movie " Forrest Gump" and I seem to remember a few shots of the shrimp haul by his boat where this huge netfull of shrimp is dumped on board. Both methods have their upsides and downsides, and my goal here to see which harvesting methods, on balance, are preferable as far as ecological consequences go. ![]() Farm-raised shrimps are harvested from man-made coastal pools where the shrimp can be contained and fed highly nutritious foods to increase their growth rates. ![]() Wild stocks are mainly dragged for using bottom trawling nets. I love shrimp, and although I gave it up for years, I’d like to find a way to eat one of my favorite foods and still not contribute to the destruction of the environment.Ĭommercial grade shrimp are found all over the world. But here I would like to focus primarily on shrimp. My first diary in this marine life series, which is here, aimed to identify those species that consumers should consider as good choices, acceptable but with problems, and those that should be off limits.
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