AMERICA’S FAVORITE SEAFOOD In Crisis

Why The Wild-Caught Shrimping Industry Is Dying

STORY BY JOHN BURNETT | PHOTOS BY DENISE CATHEY

Joe’s Oyster Bar in Port Isabel is where locals go to savor the bounty of the Gulf: flounder, black drum, red snapper, blue crab fingers, oysters. But it’s the restaurant’s shrimp that is legend. “Texas browns” with their firm shells and robust, briny flavor are widely considered one of the tastiest shrimp in the world.

“You saw ‘Forrest Gump’ and how his friend Bubba told him all the ways of preparing shrimp? The same goes for me,” says Rudy Garcia, co-author of Shrimp Tales: Port Isabel and Brownsville Shrimping History. The Port Isabel native is sitting in the noisy dining room at Joe’s before a mound of golden-fried shrimp. “I like it with eggs in the morning. I like it with rice. I like it grilled. I like it bacon wrapped. I like it fried. I like it boiled. In soup. In pasta. It goes on and on.”

Most connoisseurs of wild-caught shrimp don’t understand the world of hurt that shrimpers are in. They’ve been hit with a triple whammy: an acute shortage of deckhands, record high diesel prices and a glut of cheap, imported, farm-raised shrimp that has gutted the value of Gulf shrimp. The shrimp boat fleet at Port Isabel and the Port of Brownsville — once the largest in the world — has declined from 500 boats in the go-go days of the 1970s to about 60 boats today, say locals.

“This is an old man’s industry. Young people want nothing to do with shrimping,” Garcia says. “They don’t want to spend 60 days at sea away from their families. They don’t want to deal with the hard intensive labor that’s involved. They just don’t want to be out there.”

E.J. “Chato” Cuevas, though, refuses to give up. His grandfather started Cuevas Trawlers in the late 1960s. This spring, when most shrimpers tied their boats up because they couldn’t make any money, Cuevas sent five trawlers across the Gulf to harvest pink shrimp off Key West.

“I came into the new year with the mentality that I wasn’t going to let anything deter us and we were going to make it work one way or another,” Cuevas says, standing on the company docks, with pelicans perched on pilings.

Cuevas, 34, a devout Catholic who puts candles for Saint Michael, the Archangel, in his wheelhouses, sees the industry’s woes in universal terms. “It’s a true test of faith for me,” he says. “Suffering is a necessity in order to triumph in the end. This is just going to make us stronger and smarter.”

On the other hand, because fewer boats are on the water these days, those who venture out are bringing in monster hauls — up to 40,000 pounds of shrimp. After a good trip, a Cuevas vessel will ease up to the company dock, secure the ropes and the crew — captain, rig man and two headers — is beaming. “Their faces say, ‘We kicked some ass,’” Cuevas says. “‘We filled up the boat. Nobody got injured. We’re on land. Thank god.’”

Port Isabel/Brownsville was a latecomer to the shrimp business. It was after World War II when several established shrimping families from Louisiana motored down the Texas coast and discovered the deep waters of the lower Gulf teeming with big browns. The advent of powerful diesel engines; onboard freezers; lighter, stronger nets; and more precise navigation allowed the shrimping industry to dramatically expand. By the 1970s, shrimp cocktails were on menus from Boise to Buffalo.

Shrimp is far and away America’s favorite seafood. Per capita, we eat more than five pounds a year. And as long as it’s not swimming in garlic butter, shrimp is good for you. The crustacean is a rich source of protein, antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids.

If you want to start a bar fight in any shrimpers’ tavern along the Gulf Coast, say two words: “imported shrimp.”

One ornery boat owner at the Brownsville Shrimp Basin printed up a bumper sticker: “FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS EAT IMPORTED SHRIMP.”

In the 1980s, domestic shrimp accounted for half of U.S. consumption. At present, more than 90% of all shrimp consumed in America is farmed, the great majority of it coming from overseas. You must have noticed that it’s everywhere: pre-cooked in bulging sacks at the supermarket and listed on menus as an optional protein on everything from power bowls to pad thai.

“Shrimp used to be a premium, luxury product,” says Greg Londrie, vice president of Zimco Marine at the Shrimp Basin. “And when farm-raised shrimp came along, you had (foreign) companies say, ‘Hey, let’s turn shrimp into the next chicken.’ And so we became a dumping ground for imported, farm-raised shrimp, and it has just killed us.”

Discriminating diners say farmed shrimp has a milder flavor and softer texture. Researchers caution consumers to be wary. Some foreign shrimp farms add antibiotics that are banned in the U.S. to the shallow ponds to ward off disease, and if the ponds are not well managed, they can become squalid.

Every month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejects shipments of frozen foreign shrimp from countries like India and Indonesia because of the presence of antibiotics, and contaminations of salmonella and “filthy, putrid … substances,” according to FDA Import Refusal Reports. In 2015, Consumer Reports warned that the FDA tests less than 1% of foreign shrimp shipments. The watchdog group concluded that while proper cooking kills most bacteria on seafood, there are “real questions about how shrimp is raised, processed and regulated.” And while antibiotic-contaminated shrimp won’t make a diner sick, it can lead to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

So how does a seafood lover tell the difference between wild and farmed shrimp? “It’s really tough to tell,” says Tony Reisinger, Cameron County marine extension agent, before launching into an arcane explanation of how to look for the ridges on the tails of white shrimp, the favored breed for farmers.

The best way is to ask your server. Fact is, most restaurants that serve Gulf shrimp proudly advertise it — because it’s more expensive. Wild shrimp get their appealing saltwater flavor from their natural diet of bottom-feeding worms that are rich in a group of chemicals called bromophenols.

“We try to get everything wild caught and stay away from anything farm raised,” says Louie Ornelas, owner of Cocteleria El Levanta Muertos in Brownsville. (He chose El Levanta Muertos for the name — which literally means “the raised dead” — because customers say his seafood chowder cures hangovers.) Ornelas says he could buy Chinese shrimp for $3.75 a pound versus $5.25 per pound for wild caught. “But I want my clients to get the good stuff,” he adds. “Farm-raised shrimp is pale and rubbery and has bad ingredients.”

The domestic shrimp industry has been in decline for decades, but today it faces an existential threat. Licenses for Texas shrimp boats have plunged 84% from 1988 to 2022, according to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. Shrimpers are selling off their boats. Crews have scattered.

“Despite wild-caught shrimp being considered a better product, the U.S. shrimp industry is on the precipice of collapse,” says Deborah Long, spokesperson for the Southern Shrimp Alliance that represents the eight U.S. shrimping states.

And with so much strongly flavored breading and sauces on restaurant shrimp these days, most people don’t know if it’s farmed or wild. And they don’t care.

The Gulf of Mexico remains a seafood cornucopia. But if economic conditions don’t improve, shrimpers say there could come a time when shrimp “that tastes like the ocean” becomes a memory.