THE SEAFOOD THAT’S POISONING US AND THE PLANET

For people living far from the sea, shrimp were long considered an exotic luxury. Today they can be found, fresh or frozen, in practically every supermarket, and Americans now consume about 4 pounds per capita per year. Farmed shrimp account for more than half of global production, and as aquaculture has grown, shrimp farmers have gradually destroyed almost 40% of the world’s mangroves. According to one research paper on the situation in coastal Bangladesh, “Introduction of brackish-water shrimp aquaculture has caused ecological crisis throughout the region.” But both wild caught and farmed shrimp are problematic. The main reason wild shrimp are not necessarily a better option is that deep-sea trawlers are used to catch them, and that inadvertently kills up to 20 pounds of unwanted fish species and turtles per pound of shrimp. These “bycatch” animals are accidentally caught in the trawler’s net and discarded. Trawling for shrimp has been compared to bulldozing a section of rainforest to catch a single bird species. So why is shrimp farming not the better choice (if we ignore the mangrove destruction)? Because farmed shrimp are kept in coastal pools where the tide carries waste materials out to sea, and these substances include pesticides, piscicides (chemicals that kill predator fish), and antibiotics, some of which are banned in the U.S. for being known carcinogens and which remain in shrimp and end up in people. Moreover, regardless of farmers’ efforts to keep aquaculture ponds clean, toxic sludge gradually accumulates on the bottom, and the deadly pond eventually has to be abandoned. WHAT TO LOOK FOR: If you must eat shrimp, avoid inexpensive varieties, which are raised in countries without much government regulation. If you’re buying frozen shrimp, read the label. (The only ingredient should be “shrimp.”) And look for certification from the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), which promotes industry best practices.

Aquaculture located farms in near Southeast Asia are usually forest the sea, often once stood. where a mangrove which are The problem biodiverse : for many and Mangroves — species, and productive, coastal are a habitat hazards protect — are in communities continuing from decline.