Shrimpier This Year

Maine caught shrimp will be, well, shrimpier this year. Fewer five year old shrimp, are available so most of the catch will be made up of or the smaller four year old class shrimp. The Northern shrimp season started December 1 and will close on April 15. The season is the same for both trap and trawl catch methods and allows 136 days of fishing, less than the 180 day planned for last year. I say planned because last year's season was cut short at 156 days because of the small population of shrimp. The same could happen this year as catch rates and stocks will be monitored and the the fishing season closure date revisited in February. Shrimp are hitting the stores and pedlars now.

Shrimp are caught in traps (fixed gear) not unlike lobster traps that sit on the bottom waiting for shrimp to swim in, and nets dragged through the water behind boats (mobile gear). I prefer to buy trap caught shrimp when I can because they don't run the risk of being crushed at the bottom of the trawl, releasing enzymes that hasten their decay. I'm also pretty sure that it takes less fuel to haul traps than to trawl.

There are three questions I like to ask when I buy shrimp: Where, when and how was this product caught? If the vendor can't answer these questions I move along and make my purchase somewhere else. I like responses like "These here trap shrimp was landed Tuesday morning in Port Clyde by one of the Reed boys." Often asking any question at all will bring up a lot of information about the product. And I soak it up like a sponge. While I prefer trapped to trawl shrimp, I'll buy either caught in Maine waters in the past few days.

Jumbo Shrimp: Globalization comes to Waldo County

Oxymorons: Bird dog, a new classic, ham steak, and my favorite, jumbo shrimp. It makes me smile every time I see the phrase in print or hear it uttered. I love big little crustaceans. What's not to like about them dipped in cocktail sauce, or sauted and served over pasta, in a sandwich, stew or fried. A local product served up at a reasonable price. I wish it were that simple, but shrimp are pretty complicated these days, starting with size. The photo above is 61-70 Maine shrimp.

Shrimp size references the number of the acquatic anthropods needed to make a pound, so super jumbos (U/15 or less to the a pound) are bigger than jumbos (16/20 per pound) down to small (41/50). I'm talking wild, Gulf of Mexico shrimp as compared with an imported, farm raised product. Down in the Gulf shrimpers in Alabama get about $4.50/pound for jumbos and $1.60 for 41/50. My local store gets $7.99 for Gulf jumbos peeled and cooked. These are much larger than shrimp caught in Maine, and cheaper in the local grocery store as well. Sound wrong to you?

In the same store I can buy farm raised, cooked shrimp from Thailand or Vietnam for $7.79 a pound or frozen Maine shrimp from Maine for $8.87 a pound. How can it be less expensive to raise shrimp thousands of miles away (where it has to be fed, medicated and nurtured with care) and ship it to Waldo County. I just don't get it. Shrimp is landed on wharfs within 50 miles of the store. Boats with names like High Roller, Susan Jessica and Bad Penny (it keeps coming back) are paid $.50-$1.00 per pound for the wild caught shrimp and the peeled and cooked meat can be bought for $5.00/pound from trucks all along the mid coast area. There's so much that doesn't make sense here that I don't know where to start. The most expensive shrimp in the store is the local product. The same item can be bought a hundred yards away, outside the store for about half the price. Maine shrimp at $8.87 a pound makes the distant, farm raised product a better value for the casual shopper.

No wonder Maine shrimpers are struggling. With lots of shrimp to catch they're competing in a market where globalization means everything. Native products slug it out with domestic, and imported farm raised products in grocery store freezers and fish cases for even a modest share of the market. The outlook should be good here as Gulf of Maine shrimp are plentiful. Unlike a lot of sea food, they're not over fished at this point. This should be a bright spot in the the regional economy. But it isn't, because of persistant troubles competing in the global market.