Surf
vs. Turf
By
Nelson Antosh | Houston Chronicle
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The World shrimp industry is turning from a fishing industry to a farming industry. While Texas shrimpers still toil to pull millions of pounds of shrimp from the sea, far more of the shrimp eaten in the United States come from earthen ponds where the shrimps are confined and fed like chickens in a coop.
As is the case with chicken, shrimp consumption by Americans is zooming. The amount eaten per person went up 66% per capita between 1982 and 1992. But those who fish for shrimp are hurting because the flood of farm-raised shrimp from around the world has held down prices.
That growth led to the construction of the first major shrimp processing plant built in the United States in a decade. The plant in Brownsville is owned by Rich-SeaPak Corp. The location was chosen in part because it is near the 1,500 acres in ponds along the southern tip of Texas that are in the process of harvesting their biggest crop ever.
Plus it is near potential growth in Mexico, which has 5,000 miles of coastline well suited for shrimp pond culture. Rich-SeaPak prefers to use pond-raised shrimp and pays a slight premium price to get them, said Bill Herzig, the senior vice president for corporate operations at St. Simon's Island, Ga.
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They are willing to pay more because of quality control and price stability that can't be matched by shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico. Seapak's plant is capable of processing 60 million pounds per year. New plants hadn't been built until then because output from the Gulf couldn't have been increased without destroying the shrimp fishery. The Gulf has been at it's biological limit for at least a decade, according to Herzig.
Fishing is still a big business here. The stretch from South Texas to Florida annually yields about 200 million pounds of shrimp, sometimes a little less and sometimes a little more, depending upon the whims of nature.
SeaPak gets approximately one-half of it's supply from ponds and the rest from the Gulf.
