Shrimp Farming Impacts Coastal Wetlands

I have heard that the huge demand for shrimp by industrialized countries has spawned a huge 3rd world coastal shrimp farming boom. The impact on coastal wetlands is enormous. The following article explains.



Habitat Destruction: Mangrove Forests - From ProQuest/CSA

Nowhere are the negative impacts on the natural environment more apparent than with shrimp farming and the associated destruction of mangrove forests²². In Asia, over 400,000 hectares of mangroves have been converted into brackishwater aquaculture for the rearing of shrimp. Farmed shrimp boost a developing country's foreign exchange earnings, but the loss of sensitive habitat is difficult to reconcile.

Tropical mangroves are analogous to temperate salt marshes, a habitat critical to erosion prevention, coastal water quality, and the reproductive success of many marine organisms. Mangrove forests have also provided a sustainable and renewable resource of firewood, timber, pulp, and charcoal for local communities. To construct dyked ponds for shrimp farming, these habitats are razed and restoration is extremely difficult.

Unfortunately, shrimp ponds are often profitable only temporarily as they are subject to disease and to downward shifts in the shrimp market. Growing political pressure in western countries may restrict the shrimp market in response to consumers' avoidance of environmentally-unfriendly products. More significantly, Japan's economy is experiencing difficulty at present, and Japan is the world's largest market for shrimp; when the market falls, ponds are abandoned. A return to traditional fishing is not always possible because the lost mangroves no longer serve as nursery areas which are critical for the recruitment of many wild fish stocks. Unemployment prospects cannot always balance short-term gains. It is clear that socio-economic effects are as important as pollution and ecological damage when evaluating the sustainability of aquaculture.