The Trouble With Shrimp
by Paul Molyneaux

Northern shrimp markets have collapsed leaving fishermen with a high quality product and no buyers. A strong market is essential and some see a need for the development of them a necessary part of shrimp fishing here. Rather than a race to the bottom on prices the relatively low volume high quality product may appeal to the high end consumer. Wild caught, clean, and fresh are built in value added features in markets glutted with the opposite.

Eddy Thorbjornsen of Port Clyde has fished for Maine shrimp, Pandalus borealis, for over 40 years. Back in the late 1960s the Norwegians offered a booming market that led to heavy fishing and was followed by a collapse of Maine’s shrimp stock.

In the early 1980’s Thorbjornsen started selling to roadside vendors again, at 35 to 40 cents per pound. Processors soon opened up shop in Portland and Rockland, leading to an increased demand that brought the boat price up to $1.20 per pound in 1987. Business went well for the next twelve years, following the natural cycles of the shrimp, but the resource took a dive again a few years ago and regulators shortened the season — down to 25 days in one particular year —choosing to protect stocks rather than processors.

“The short season and reduced resource drove out buyers and now, without the infrastructure, there are no markets for Maine shrimp,” says Thorbjornsen, who now keeps his three boats in Portland to reduce fuel costs and sells his shrimp for 36 cents per pound. “That ain’t enough to make living,” he says.

Other former shrimp fishermen, such as Bernard Raynes of Owls Head, have simply decided not to rig up for such low prices. In its report on the state of the world’s fisheries, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization observed that some fisheries might collapse; not from a lack of fish, but for a lack of market. With its resource back and a 140-day season, Maine’s shrimp industry might still be facing commercial collapse.

Although markets for Maine shrimp have shifted all over the world in the last half-century, marketing is becoming more difficult.

“The glut of shrimp from foreign farmed shrimp, and the abundance of [Pandalus borealis] from Canada has driven prices down and markets away from Maine,” says Jim Marcos of Maine Shellfish in Ellsworth Maine. According to Marcos, Canada landed 25 million pounds of shrimp to Maine’s 2 million pounds in 200(?).

The Tsunami that struck the southeast coast of Asia a little over a year ago damaged thousands of shrimp farms. But the disaster did little to stop the tidal wave of cheap shrimp flooding the US market — 1.1 billion pounds a year enter the US, with over half of the imports coming from aquaculture. Maine shrimp represent a tiny blip on the radar of US production, and their contribution to world production is microscopic. Many farms in Mexico out-produce Maine’s entire shrimp fleet. Indonesia’s largest shrimp farm out-produces the entire United States shrimp aquaculture industry.

Although southern US shrimpers managed to get tariffs against some foreign imports, slowing the flow from Thailand and Vietnam, other countries—such as Mexico and Taiwan—have quickly filled the gap. Southern shrimpers saw their prices rise only a few cents before Hurricane Katrina set much of the industry back on it heels.

“The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) may soon cancel the US shrimp program,” says Dr. Donald Lightner, a shrimp expert at the University of Arizona. The program was intended to boost the US production and markets, and funded much of Lightner’s work.

“As far as I can see, Asian production is going to continue to increase and prices will keep going down,” says Lightner.

The situation does not look good for US producers, but American companies operating in the global shrimp farming scene express optimism.

“The boom is just beginning,” said Kurt Klimpel, lead researcher for Aqua Bounty, the Massachusetts based company that developed the transgenic salmon. What would drive the new boom? Klimpel gave a one-word answer: “Biotechnology.”

With shrimp consumption steadily increasing and new technology on hand to increase production per acre, the future looks bright for people like Klimpel, and others who are positioned well in the global economy. For them, the universe is expanding.

For US shrimp fishermen the universe appears to be contracting. But it doesn’t have to, according to Jerald Horst of the University of Louisiana. Horst was hard to reach after the hurricanes last fall, but managed to comment on the state of the shrimp fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It breaks my heart to see these fishing communities destroyed by low priced imports,” said Horst. “What fishermen need to do, if they can, is organize and find niche markets for what is a superior product,” he said.

In spite of dramatic changes in the shrimp supply stream, Horst believes the global market leaves many cracks that US producers can fill. Though he admits it will be an uphill battle.

“Fishermen need to get organized. I’m not optimistic about that,” Horst said.

Maine shrimp fishermen have found ways to survive in the past and many believe they can do so again. Without a doubt, Maine shrimp have an excellent potential for supplying a seasonal high-end market. People like John Norton of Cozy Harbor Seafood in Portland are working to create niche markets for Maine shrimp, but Maine shrimp fishermen may need more than tenacious entrepreneurs to increase prices for their product; they may need to engage in some savvy marketing, according to Thorbjornsen.

“Maine shrimp is better tasting and of a higher quality than any farmed product,” says Thorbjornsen. “We need a program similar to what the lobstermen have,” he adds, referring to the industry supported promotion council dedicated to expanding the lobster market.

It might be hard for local consumers to see roadside vendors selling shrimp for $4 or $5 dollars a pound again, as they did in the 1980s, but watching a long-standing Maine fishery succumb to commercial extinction would be harder. A strong market is a must for shrimp fishermen and fishing communities in need of options.