Collapsing GA Shrimp Industry Stuck Between Warming-Driven Black Gill Disease, Flood Of Farmed, Imported, Cheaper Shrimp
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Fewer than 200 shrimp boats are working on Georgia’s coast these days, Frischer said, down from around 1,500 in the early 2000s. Shrimpers in other south Atlantic states and the Gulf of Mexico are facing similar declines. The main culprit, scientists, shrimpers, and the International Trade Commission agree, is foreign imports: Farm-raised shrimp from Asia and South America have flooded the market in huge quantities, cratering prices and making it impossible for the local industry to compete.
Around the same time that foreign competition skyrocketed, U.S. shrimpers started noticing another problem: a mysterious new shrimp disease. Scientists have only recently cracked that case, a condition known as black gill, and they say it’s linked to climate change: New environmental conditions have helped give rise to a new disease, a pattern that’s likely to repeat as the climate keeps warming. The decades-long effort to understand black gill offers some lessons for the scientific community as more climate-driven diseases emerge, even as the still-rising ocean temperatures help black gill spread into a second species of Georgia shrimp.
In the Georgia legislature this year, coastal Republican Jesse Petrea decided to take on the issue of foreign competition with a bill requiring restaurants to disclose the origin of their shrimp — because even on the shrimp-rich coast, many are serving imports. “You got pictures of shrimp boats on the wall, and you’re serving Indian shrimp,” Petrea said. “Somewhat consumer fraud in my opinion.” To back up Petrea’s bill, SeaD Consulting, a Gulf-based firm that specializes in seafood mislabeling, performed genetic testing on the shrimp at 44 Savannah restaurants. The company found that 34 were actually serving foreign shrimp. “Some people would say, ‘Well, but they’re cheap.’ They are, but at what cost?” Petrea said of the imported alternative. “I’ll pay a little more for domestic shrimp, and we all should recognize we have to pay a little more.”
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Now, Frischer with UGA said, he and his fellow researchers know what causes black gill and much more about its impact on Georgia shrimp. The condition is caused by a type of microorganism commonly found in water known as a ciliate. The ciliate attaches itself to the gills, and the shrimp’s natural immune response produces melanin. Once there’s a high enough concentration of the melanin, the shrimp’s gills take on a darkened appearance to the naked eye. Affected shrimp are still safe for humans to eat, but their respiration rates and endurance are affected and they become more vulnerable to predators. The particular ciliate that causes this disease has probably always been there, Frischer said, but it’s never caused a problem before — in fact, it had never been identified by scientists before he and his team did so. But climate change has shifted ocean conditions. Disease, he explained, arises when just the right conditions overlap among a host, a pathogen, and the environment — in this case, shrimp, the ciliate that causes black gill, and the ocean off the southeastern U.S. coast.
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https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/climate-change-foreign-imports-hurt-us-shrimp/