Ask Dr. Green
Dear Dr. Green, I love eating shrimp but I've heard its bad for the environment if I do. Is this true?
Eating shrimp is not bad for the environment, as long as you know which shrimp to buy. It can be really difficult to know where your food is coming from in this day and age. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch provides a chart that shows what kind of seafoods are your "best choices" (green column), "good alternatives" (yellow column), and which to "avoid" (red column). (www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_regional.aspx) There are about 2,000 species of shrimp and prawns in the ocean right now. Only 200 are considered edible, but still only 20 of those are in the American fish markets. The most commonly caught shrimp in the United States is the brown shrimp, caught on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. White and pink shrimp are second most commonly caught.
There are three main ways to catch shrimp, farm them, trawl them, or trap them. Farming and trawling shrimp are the most harmful techniques of catching shrimp. Farms are often on the coasts of Asia, where people cut down mangrove forests to make room for the farms. When the farming kills the remains of the forests in that concentrated area, the farmers move down to a new, untouched part of the forest and establish their new farms there. The water is also polluted and is spilled right back out to the ocean. The shrimp in the farm need feeding, so the farmers collect fish from the ocean to feed their shrimp causing an imbalance in the oceanic food chain. Farmed shrimp is in the "avoid" column.
Trawling is when the fishermen drag huge nets across the bottom of the ocean to collect the shrimp. This not only destroys the habitat but it collects a huge amount of unwanted fish and turtles, often killing them. It is estimated that for every pound of shrimp caught in the trawls, there are three to fifteen pounds of bycatch. American fishermen are forced to use nets that have bycatch-reduction and turtle-excluder devices. American trawled shrimp is in the "good alternatives" column.
Trapping shrimp is considered the "best way" to catch shrimp. It is the least harmful to the habitat and the amount of bycatch is incredibly miniscule. The traps are designed to have shrimp and crab crawl in but the fish can swim out. Traps are used all along the west coast from Alaska down to Southern California and these shrimp are caught fresh from April through October, and for the other 6 months you can find them frozen. Trapped shrimp are in the "best choices" column.
Although it may be tempting to eat some $4.99 shrimp at Sizzler, it may be more worthwhile to wait and go to Chez Panisse or Oliveto to get shrimp that was well caught and didn't harm the oceanic eco-system. Make your own judgment and decide which is more important, a cheap dinner or a healthy ocean.
This month’s guest doctor was Sondra Firestein, The Athenian School High School, Danville
sondraf@earthteam.net
Got a question you'd like to see answered? Submit it or any comment to doctorgreen@earthlink.net 
By Sangeeta Hegde, June 2005 graduate of College Park HS, Pleasant Hill
