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VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Back in the 1990s, watermen started noticing shrimp were getting caught in their gill nets in waters just off Virginia Beach. In response, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission in 2018 issued free shrimp permits to a couple of watermen in Virginia Beach who would haul in 300 pounds of shrimp on a good day.
Today, 12 watermen, with permits, work the waters for shrimp and on a good day, the haul is more than a thousand pounds. 100 people applied for 2020 permits but only 12 permits were issued to watermen in Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore in a lottery system.
Shrimping is also a game of chance.
“One day I think I caught 16 shrimp, two days later [I caught] 1700 pounds,” said Captain Pat Foster who joined the experiment this year. “They are more plentiful this year. I don’t know if it’s global warming. It seems that everything is moving north,” said Foster.
Pat Geer, the Chief of Fisheries Management for VMRC confirms because of warmer ocean water the state has seen exponential growth in the amount of shrimp off the coast of Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore. Conversely, fish such as summer flounder have moved farther north. Geer is pleased with the experiment which is in its second year. ” It’s been very successful so far- we want to grow this industry slowly and carefully,” said Geer.
Last year Virginia watermen hauled in 60-thousand pounds of green tail white shrimp which is known for its subtle and sweet flavor. So far this season, which runs from Oct. 1 through New Year’s Eve, 72,000 pounds of shrimp have been netted off the coast of the resort city.
Todd Brown with a two fisted catch
(Photo Courtesy: Ryan Benzel)
Captain Pat Foster, ofVirginia Beach Shrimp, spent 20-thousand dollars to modify the Alanna Kay to catch shrimp with a 16-foot net that’s allowed in the water in 30-minute intervals per haul. So far, Foster, who has worked the waters since 1996, says the investment has paid off.
Captain Pat Foster at the helm
(Photo Courtesy: Ryan Benzel)
State officials say the shrimp experiment generates 350-500-thousand dollars a year. Once shrimping becomes a regulated industry, it could become a multi-million dollar industry. Waterman Bobby Crisher says look no further than North Carolina for evidence.
“One shrimp trawler in North Carolina drags more nets than all ten of us[ Virginia Beach watermen] put together. We drag 16 feet they drag four 55 foot nets with one trawler,” said Crisher, who was the first waterman in Virginia to obtain a permit for commercial shrimping.
The commerce side of the business is fueled by social media, word of mouth, and handmade signs that are propped along the entrance to the Virginia Beach Fishing Center and along the 300 block of Winston Salem Avenue. Just behindBig Sam’srestaurant, the Alanna Kay docks around 3:30 pm, almost daily, to customers who are waiting with coolers and ice.
Marty Nopper, a regular, likes to cook a pound and then freeze a pound. His post-Thanksgiving meal is Italian inspired.
“Shrimp and linguini pasta tonight- this is the only place where I buy my shrimp,” said Nopper.
Pierside shrimp along Rudee Inlet sells for $5.00 a pound. North Carolina shrimp, heads off, sells for $12.99 at a nearby grocery store. Captain Foster offers a video tutorial for anyone who has never had the pleasure of beheading the coveted crustacean.
Local shrimpers hope the state will expand the fishery and the length of the season. Currently, the fishery is limited to an area between Dam Neck Rd south to the North Carolina line and within three miles from the shore.
“There’s plenty up north [to Cape Henry] that we want fish now- if they expanded that that would be great,” said Captain Foster.
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The $90m integrated tilapia and shrimp farm in Egypt built by Guangdong Evergreen Group in collaboration with the Egyptian military. Credit: Guangdong Evergreen Group
Evergreen Conglomerate, formerly Guangdong Evergreen, is still pressing ahead with plans for a huge aquaculture development in Saudi Arabia albeit at a slow pace, the firm told Undercurrent News.
The limited progress on the project, which was officially announced in China in April of last year, and revealed by Undercurrent in late 2018, has been blamed on the pandemic.
Evergreen chairman Chen Dan and Mohammed Salem H Alharbi, CEO of Falcon Vision, signed an agreement for a "fisheries park" at the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in April 2019.
However, little has been shared about the plans for a vertically integrated shrimp farm, hatcheries, feed plants, deep-water cages with processing facilities, previously reported to be worth $300 million, in the Middle Eastern country.
Given the paucity of information since putting to pen and paper, some in the industry have wondered whether the project had stalled.
Earmarked to be built across 4,000 hectares near Jazan, on the Red Sea, besides vertically integrated farms, the site would include R&D training centers and other support facilities forming a "complete aquaculture industrial chain".
"Yes, the project is still going on," Samantha Xie, director of Evergreen's international department, reaffirmed to Undercurrent. "But unfortunately, it is also affected by the COVID-19 epidemic in Saudi Arabia this year, and has only seldom made progress."
"However, this whole time we have been in touch with our partner in Saudi Arabia to exchange views for overall project planning and construction details," she said.
She added that "construction preparation" is being discussed.
Evergreen previously said it would be responsible for the overall planning and design of the project, equipment supply, installation and commissioning, product marketing, personnel training and technical support. It would also take on some level of operation and management.
The project will also involve a "high degree of automation" and "complete biological safety control systems", and provide leisure facilities for tourism.
African and Middle Eastern countries lined up to work with Evergreen, which is headquartered in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, after it successfully built the region's largest turn-key vertically integrated shrimp and tilapia farm in Egypt.
Opened in November of 2017, the $90m development was built by the Chinese company in collaboration with the Egyptian military.
Xie said the Egypt farm -- which was opened by Egypt’s president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi -- "has been generally running well". A project team from Evergreen is currently on-site to provide operational and technical support, she said.
She added Evergreen also plans to build an aquafeed mill in India in the near future, adding to feed mills it operates in southeast Asia. Currently, the firm has a sales office in India, from which it markets shrimp feed.
After two weeks of stability, a downward trend in Ecuadorian shrimp pricing has continued, several sources in the industry explained Undercurrent News.
"Ecuadorian shrimp is not much of a Christmas product, so we don't expect demand to grow in December nor in early January, which is the only way prices could go up," a small Ecuadorian shrimp producer, who spoke in condition of anonymity, told Undercurrent.
"On a different note, I disagree with what some of my colleagues are currently promoting. I don't believe the solution to drove prices up is to lower crop densities or stop producing, as I'm sure other producing countries would take advantage of it and get us out of the market."
As of Nov. 30, average farmgate prices for head-on, shell-on (HOSO) Ecuadorian shrimp were $4.30/kg for 20/30 count shrimp; $3.30/kg for 30/40 count; $3.00/kg for 40/50; $2.80/kg for 50/60; $2.60/kg for 60/70; $2.40/kg for 70-80; $2.30 for 80-100; and $2.20/kg for 100/120 count.
Depending on sizes, this equates to a decrease of $0.10/kg to $0.40/kg for HOSO shrimp compared to the levels seen two weeks ago, as the chart below shows.
The source added that he sees a push to lower production costs to minimum levels as the only possible solution in the short-term.
"We should change our strategy, innovate, and seek greater efficiency and profitability. As long as we [producers] don't generate the changes we want to see, we will continue to obtain the same results," he said.
Further help needed
Undercurrentpreviously reported that the current situation is not set to get any better in the coming weeks as new lockdowns are looming around the world and shrimp usually reaches its lowest price level by the end of the year.
"That added to the current situation due to the pandemic, it is most likely that the sector will experience more critical and much more difficult moments than it did in previous years," a second small Ecuadorian shrimp producer also explained.
The forecast for the end of 2020 is that despite the sector's efforts to generate higher sales volume during the year, "this will not be reflected in the total turnover", another industry source previously said.
In addition, producers quoted on an Ecuadorian shrimp farmers' Facebook forum said there is not enough aid coming from government bodies and that their situation is increasingly worrying.
"Prices are out of control, and many of us are losing capital due to this," the commenter said.
A second commenter agreed, lamenting what he called a lack of government action.
"Despite being a sector that provides thousands of job opportunities and resources to the country, there is no aid to help us sustain the production amidst the great blow we are receiving," the commenter said.
The Atlantic mud fiddler crab Minuca pugnax historically inhabited the salt marshes of the U.S. East Coast from Florida to Cape Cod. Global warming has allowed them to expand their range northward to southern Maine. (WYDaily/Courtesy of Danielle Doucette/VIMS)
As earth warms, species around the world — Adélie penguins, earthworms, gray snapper, pin oaks — are shifting into habitats once too cold for them. One such “climate migrant” is the Atlantic mud fiddler crab Minuca pugnax.
Historically found only as far north as Cape Cod, this saltmarsh dweller has now been seen in southern Maine, 75 miles farther poleward.
Fiddler crabs live in salt marshes, mangroves and beaches worldwide. Males have a giant claw to attract females and fight rival males. Their name derives from the male’s habit of using its small claw to carry food from the ground it to its mouth. When the small claw moves past the large one, the crab appears to be “fiddling.” (WYDaily/Courtesy of D.S. Johnson/VIMS)
A key question for ecologists is how the arrival of climate migrants might impact the native ecosystem, and vice versa.
Lead author Dr. David Johnson, a marine ecologist at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, says, “You see this with invasive species when they are carried from one continent, say Europe, to a new one, say North America.
They often leave their enemies — predators, competitors, and parasites — behind. We wanted to know if a species that colonizes a new habitat that’s near its old one could also escape its enemies, in this case, its parasites.”
Johnson and his coauthors discovered the answer is a clear yes. He was joined on the paper by VIMS colleagues Dr. Jeff Shields and Danielle Doucette, along with Dr. Richard Heard of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.
“We found no metazoan parasites from the historical range in the expanded range,” says Shields, a parasite ecologist. “Fiddler crabs north of Cape Cod had fewer parasite species overall and fewer parasites per crab than fiddler crabs south of Cape Cod,” adds Johnson. They note their findings were unexpected as bird hosts, which many parasites require to complete their life cycle, are present in both ranges.
Another unexpected finding was that fiddler crabs north of Cape Cod had a parasite not seen in more southerly populations. “The presence of this new parasite — a trematode worm — shows that climate migrants will face new pathogens when they immigrate into new habitats,” says Shields. “Although they may lose enemies by moving into an area, novel enemies lurk in their new-found habitat.”
The arrival of fiddler crabs may actually be good news for the trematode because the crab provides another host. “The new [parasite] is a great example of host sharing, or host switching,” says Shields. “The newly arriving fiddler crabs may act to expand populations of this worm.”
A collection of fiddler crabs stands ready for microscopic analysis for parasites. (WYDaily/Courtesy of D.S. Johnson/VIMS)
The pair’s findings have implications for both parasites and their hosts. “With fewer parasites in its expanded range,” says Johnson, “fiddler crabs north of Cape Cod are, on average, larger than those to the south.” He suspects the northern crabs may be larger because they don’t have as many enemies. “Though we haven’t formally tested this hypothesis for this species, when you have fewer enemies, you can invest more energy into growth and reproduction than defense,” says Johnson.
The authors caution that even though fiddler crabs north of Cape Cod are relatively parasite free now, they won’t be forever. “We call this the ‘honeymoon hypothesis,'” says Johnson. “Fiddler crabs in the expanded range have escaped their parasites for now, but their parasites will eventually catch up.”
“I suspect that even more new enemies will use fiddlers as they become more abundant in their expanded range,” adds Shields.
Range expansion due to ocean warming
The fiddlers’ range expansion is likely due to ocean warming. “The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any other part of the ocean,” says Johnson. “The water there is now warm enough for the crab’s pelagic larvae.” He describes these as “triangles with legs and long noses, which later metamorphose into the claw-waving adult crabs we’re more familiar with.”
Johnson was one of the first to document Minuca pugnax in its expanded habitat. “I was standing in a salt marsh in northeast Massachusetts in 2014 when I saw a fiddler crab scuttle under my feet and into a burrow,” he recounts. He thought the sighting was a fluke, but found them as far north as New Hampshire later that year, and as far north as southern Maine by 2019.
In addition to revealing interactions between Minuca and its parasites, Shields notes that the team’s study has broader value as well. “Marine invertebrates have a very diverse group of parasites and pathogens, quite unlike what we see in vertebrate hosts,” he says. “The parasites we observed span several phyla and help illuminate how these communities are organized. This type of study can help us formulate and test general rules of how diseases move through aquatic populations affected by climate change.”
MOREHEAD CITY — Local fishermen, commercial and recreational, and others have an opportunity to advise state fisheries managers on shrimp regulations.
The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries is looking for fishermen, scientists, representatives of nongovernment organizations and other interested parties to sit on a shrimp fishery management plan advisory committee. The committee will join the division in a workshop over several days in spring 2021 to develop Amendment 2 to the N.C. Shrimp Fishery Management Plan. To help reduce the spread of the coronavirus, the workshop will be held via webinar.
Amendment 2 will examine management strategies to further reduce bycatch of nontarget species in the shrimp trawl fishery, habitat protections, as well as potential changes to existing shrimp management. Topics under review include effort controls (e.g., fishing day restrictions, headrope limits, etc.) and shrimp trawl area restrictions for habitat protections and potential reductions in bycatch.
The division is looking for a cross-section of those representing the various commercial and recreational shrimp fisheries, including those who fish with large trawlers, small trawlers, skimmer trawlers, channel nets, shrimp pots and cast nets. The division would also like to seat scientists with expertise in the areas of habitat or bycatch and gear innovation, especially with trawls and bycatch reduction devices, as well as other individuals interested in shrimp fishing issues.
To be qualified to serve on the committee, applicants may not have had a significant fisheries violation within the past three years. Since all meetings will held via webinar, individuals interested in serving are strongly encouraged to have access to a computer, tablet or smartphone with an internet connection.
Individuals interested in serving as an adviser should be available to attend and actively participate in the workshop tentatively scheduled for March. This will include reviewing scientific documents and issue papers and providing input to the division on refining management options in draft Amendment 2. Workshop-style meetings allow scientists, managers and stakeholders on the committee to address questions, comments and concerns more effectively and in a less formal setting.
Advisers who complete the necessary paperwork will be reimbursed for expenses incurred in relation to their official duties.
Adviser applications are available online at portal.ncdenr.org/web/mf/mfc-advisory-committees, at DMF offices or by calling 252-808-8022 or 800-682-2632. Applications should be returned by Tueday, Jan. 5 by email to Dana.Gillikin@ncdenr.gov or by mail to N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557, Attention: Dana Gillikin.
The commercial Dungeness crab fishery opener, traditionally Dec. 1, has been delayed again this year due to low meat recovery levels.
After crabs molt and shed their exoskeletons, it takes a little while for their new ones to harden and fill with meat. If they don’t meet specifications in state sampling, regulators can delay the season.
“The fishery in Washington, Oregon and California is delayed until at least Dec. 16 (south of Klipsan Beach, which is midway between Grays Harbor and the Columbia River) waiting for better meat recovery results,” said Dan Ayres, Department of Fish and Wildlife coastal shellfish manager. “The Washington fishery north of Klipsan Beach is delayed to give tribal fishers a head start.”
The Quinault Indian Nation, which has treaty rights to some of the crab and is not bound by the tri-state agreement that governs seasons for non-tribal commercial crabbers, is also delaying its fishery north of Klipsan Beach “due to elevated domoic acid in crab they collected from the central Washington coast,” said Ayres.
High levels of domoic acid, a marine toxin that at certain levels can be harmful to humans if ingested, shut down razor clam digging last month and levels are also high in crab. Like the state, the Quinault Indian Nation takes its own samples and submits them to the state Department of Health for analysis.
“We were on the ocean yesterday (Sunday), ahead of this storm and messy ocean we saw coming, to fish our test gear to get new meat recovery and domoic acid results,” said Ayres. “California and Oregon were out doing the same. We expect to have a tri-state fishery opening — or further delay — decision some time later this week.”
The $20 million fishery in Washington is one of the most important in the state, according to Fish and Wildlife. There are 228 Washington coastal commercial Dungeness crab license holders.
The season usually starts around Dec. 1, but the tri-state testing protocols specify that if any area does not meet the minimum meat recovery criteria — 23% north of Cascade Head and 24% south of Cascade Head — the fishery is delayed.
The last round of testing in early November showed meat recovery of 21.8% at both Long Beach and Westport, below the minimum required level. Meat recovery levels were high enough for the opener in two testing areas in California and all but two in Oregon, Astoria and Port Orford. Per the tri-state agreement, if areas do not meet the minimum, the entire fishery is delayed.
Last year, the non-tribal commercial fishery was delayed several times due to low meat recovery levels and did not open until Jan. 25. The Quinault Indian Nation opened its 2019 fishery in early December.
