Four Texas shrimp farms quarantined

HARLINGEN - Four Rio Grande Valley shrimp farms have been quarantined to prevent a shrimp virus from entering the Gulf of Mexico and infecting wild shrimp, Texas Parks and Wildlife officials said today.

Known as the Taura Syndrome, the virus is not a threat to people but is deadly to shrimp. An outbreak could wipe out an entire crop of shrimp.

Seventy percent of the nation's shrimp farms are in Texas, the nation's leading shrimp producer. The bulk of those farms are in the Rio Grande Valley.

The virus is believed to have originated in Pacific coast shrimp farms in South America in the early 1990s. By 1992, it had cost Ecuadorean shrimp producers $100 million. By 1995, it had spread through Central America and Mexico and had infected more than 80 percent of the shrimp farms in Texas, with the state's producers reporting some $12 million in losses.

The shrimp farms reported the virus to Parks and Wildlife last week, and the quarantine was put in place Thursday. The infected farms are: Arroyo Aquaculture Association and Southern Star, of Harlingen; Bowers Shrimp Farm, of Palacios; and Loma Alta, of Raymondville.

"We haven't seen it since 1999 and in the Valley since 1997, so it's been a long run," said TPWD biologist Mike Ray.

The virus has never been found in wild shrimp, Ray said.

"But we don't want big doses of it being released, particularly at this time of the year when shrimp spawning is still happening," he said.

Shrimp farmers mostly raise Pacific white shrimp, which adapt better than Gulf species to the shrimp ponds. The exotic species are crossed with special "disease-free" strains to help prevent outbreaks.

Associated Press