Shem Creek - A seafood-lover's paradise!

They were listed first alphabetically as competitors in this year’s MegaDock Tournament, so it was practically “in the stars” that the ‘Bench Mark‘ crew end a day early – with double the catch of the 2nd place team!

Bench Mark’s Blue Marlin and 5 Sailfish releases toppled Reel Passion’s 2nd place spot of 2 Blue Marlin and 1 Sailfish release, but everybody involved had a great time no doubt!

“The interesting thing is that for the first time in years, a large number of blue marlin were encountered, with 14 actually being caught and released. This is more than the total number of blue’s that have been caught this year in the three previous tournaments combined. Further, in recent years, July has been a slow month for encountering blue marlin. The reason for the surge is unknown.” – SCDNR biologist Wallace Jenkins.

Congratulations to the ‘Bench Mark’ crew. So, what’s the split on $105,184 amongst y’all anyway?

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.

Anyway, this diagram from SCDNR shows all the stages shrimp go through in their life cycle, something you’ll be intimately involved in if you work on a shrimp farm. Happy harvesting!