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North Carolina's
Carteret Community College
takes a chance on
bait-shrimp aquaculture
MOREHEAD
CITY - In a tank inside the aquaculture
facility at Carteret Community College
swim shrimp caught by students in a cast
net earlier this year.
They are keeping the shrimp under the scenario
that they will be able to sell the live bait
for a good price for midwinter fishing, said
Skip Kemp, who coordinates the aquaculture
program for the college.
"We're holding them beyond the time
they are normally prevalent in the water," Kemp
said.
While only a classroom exercise, in the process
of trying to keep the shrimp alive the students
will develop feed and growing systems, knowledge
the students can carry with them into the
future, Kemp said.
It's a future Kemp said he believes holds
great promise for shrimp farming, but one
he also believes may be a long way off.
"I do see it as a good growth area," Kemp
said.
Shrimp is America's favorite seafood, according
to the National Marine Fisheries Service,
and Americans consumed an average of 4.2
pounds of shrimp per person in 2004.
To meet this growing demand, the United States
has turned to imported shrimp, which now
accounts for nearly 90 percent of all the
shrimp consumed in this country. Much of
the imported shrimp is farm-raised, Kemp
said.
"The balance of trade is stimulus for
economic development," he said.
The state of South Carolina has sponsored
research on growing shrimp in greenhouses
and has worked out much of the biological
productivity needs, Kemp said.
"Now they're working on the economic
feasibility," Kemp
said.
That could be where the problems will lay,
said Preston Pate, director of the N.C. Division
of Marine Fisheries. Many of the large shrimp-importing
countries have an inexpensive labor force,
too.
"There's a good chance that the imported
farm-raised shrimp would be cheaper than
the domestic
farm-raised shrimp," Pate said.
But Pate, too, has hopes that shrimp farming
could develop in North Carolina.
"I would like to think there is an option
for aquaculture to get involved in this and
try to offset some of the market control
that the foreign imports have on the total
U.S. market for shrimp," Pate said
Many in the wild shrimp industry would likely
oppose such an idea, seeing it as further
competition, Pate said. But the nation's
demand for shrimp is so high that it is not
practical to think that
the wild harvest can meet it, where farm-raised
shrimp might, he said.
"I think everybody would prefer to bolster
the U.S. economy," Pate said.
North Carolina's Department of Agriculture
has staff devoted to aquaculture, but Pate
said
he
does not know if there are any plans to more
aggressively promote shrimp farming. Kemp
said North Carolina has simply not yet placed
emphasis on mariculture, as some other
states have.
For now, Kemp's aquaculture program is relying
heavily on the research done in South Carolina
as it gets its own experience in handling
shrimp.
"We're not really in a position yet
where we could encourage someone to get into
shrimp
farming," Kemp said.
Source:
Patricia Smith
The Daily
News
Jacksonville, N.C.
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