Sea Change: U.S. Shrimpers Go Green to Compete - WSJ.com

Sea Change: U.S. Shrimpers Go Green to Compete - WSJ.com: "Sea Change: U.S. Shrimpers
Go Green to Compete
'Free-Range Catch'
Is New Selling Point
In Troubled Industry
By ALYSSA ABKOWITZ
June 27, 2008; Page A4

TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. -- Meet the free-range shrimp.

As summer shrimping gets under way in the warm, coastal waters off the southeastern U.S., fishermen still are struggling to find a viable business model for survival. Nothing has stopped a price-depressing flood of foreign shrimp -- much of which is farm-raised and harvested without the backbreaking tasks of plying the ocean. And many environmentalists still view shrimpers as outdoor perpetrators who harm the ocean, turtles and cherished wildlife.
Fishermen battling competition from the flood of foreign shrimp and criticism from environmentalists struggle to find a viable business model. WSJ's Alyssa Abkowitz reports they are borrowing a page from organic farmers.

So shrimp fishermen are borrowing a page from organic farmers, some of whom let their chickens wander freely before being slaughtered and then sold at higher prices than their cooped-up cousins. Shrimpers are pushing their catch as an organically raised (and presumably happier-in-life) food with a fraction of the carbon tail-print of the millions of shrimp shipped in freighters that must cross the Pacific Ocean or travel from South America to the U.S."