WHY AREN'T WE EATING MORE WILD-CAUGHT SHRIMP?

Americans are eating more shrimp than ever, up to 5 pounds per capita per year—but it’s not the shrimp most of them think they’re eating

- MOLLY HARRISON

ON a sunny and slick-calm North Carolina winter day, Captain John Silver navigates his 43-foot trawler, Silver Dollar, through Oregon Inlet into the Pamlico Sound, a trail of seagulls hovering close behind.

With the boat's hold full of 6,000 pounds of white shrimp, the highly sought-after, succulently sweet species the locals call "green tails," he and his crew are headed to the fish house docks in Wanchese to sell their day's haul.

Depending on the season, Silver’s shrimping grounds around the Outer Banks of North Carolina range from the nearshore Atlantic Ocean to the Pamlico and Croatan sounds, part of AlbemarlePamlico Estuary, the second-largest estuarine system in the United States. Nourished by freshwater rivers and the salty ocean, these brackish waters are a productive breeding and feeding ground for marine life, including shrimp, the nation’s favorite seafood. The state’s three species of shrimp—brown, white, and pink—proliferate here and are caught in the sounds and near shore at various times of the year.

These waters are one of the top producers of shrimp in the nation, averaging 7.4 million pounds per year from 1994 to 2022. The wildcaught shrimp harvested here are one of the healthiest sources of protein on the planet and are sustainably harvested to strict governmental standards.

Yet when most North Carolinians sit down to a seafood dinner, even in restaurants overlooking these very waters, they are rarely eating shrimp that was harvested by Silver or his fellow commercial shrimpers. It’s a scenario that plays out in all the top shrimping states throughout the Southeast.

So, what’s the catch? Imports. Ninety percent of the shrimp that

Americans eat is imported from shrimp farms in Vietnam, China, India, Thailand, and Central America.