Fortunately for South Carolina, it doesn’t look like we’re gonna be environmentally impacted by BP’s oil spill. A bigger concern for many in the seafood industry here isn’t even about a drop in seafood supply, but rather, a drop in demand.

A recent poll by Louisiana State University of Gulf area residents found 57% of them said they were less likely to buy local seafood because of the spill.
– Seafood.com

True, you may be worried about seafood like Gulf residents are right now, but know this:

• of the 17% of the seafood Americans eat that comes from domestic sources, only 2% of that comes from the Gulf, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group.

If everybody were aware of those numbers, the seafood market would largely remain stable throughout this environmental crisis. It still doesn’t solve the problem shrimpers are having with a huge reduction in supply out in the ocean though, but for shrimpers willing and able to make an occupational shift of sorts, shrimp farming may be an option worth looking into.

I had no idea how widespread shrimp farming is around the world until I just watched this video from Texas (A&M I think). I touches on all the different steps needed to get a shrimp farm going, but I’ll tell you right now, you’re probably gonna need some serious financial backing to get this project going.

According to Wikipedia, the U.S. hit a high of 5,000 tonnes of farmed shrimp production per year back in 2003 and 2004, but we’ve since slid back to 2,000 tonnes of farmed shrimp production (as of 2007); who knows, maybe you can get a piece of the market now.