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!

Season restrictions, signed into law last year, for the entire Santee Cooper system (lakes and rivers) for striped bass went into effect June 1. Anglers must not harvest or possess striped bass and must immediately release any stripers caught from June 1 – September 30.

This is considered a first step to combat the population decline of the striped bass fishery in the Santee Cooper system by reducing the amount of fish an angler can harvest, as well as increasing the minimum size limits.

The regulations also include (when applicable):

1. Reduction in creel limits from five to three
2. Points system: increase to 14 points for violation
3. Increase in minimum size limit from 21 inches to 26 inches
4. Striped bass must be landed with head & tail intact so enforcement officers can measure the complete fish

Because striped bass can live in fresh water for long periods of time, they are stocked in many inland reservoirs. However, only two East Coast reservoirs have self-sustaining populations: the Kerr Reservoir in Virginia and North Carolina, and the Santee-Cooper Reservoir in South Carolina.

It is SCDNR’s and our job as sustainable anglers to insure that this hardy species keeps flourishing in our waters, and the only way to do that is to occasionally cut-back on fishing limits as the Striped Bass Stakeholders Group recommended to Gov. Sanford last year.