Shrimp_ShrimpFarms_Wilson_Diane_SeadriftTX_23October2003_Reel2287.wav

Diane Wilson [00:00:01] The shrimp farms have become a major obstacle for the fisheries regaining their foothold, and matter of fact, they're almost like dealing a deathblow to it.

Diane Wilson [00:00:17] I know right now about 90 percent of the shrimp eaten in the United States is provided by shrimp farms and the general public doesn't realize that, you know, they go to Red Lobsters or they go to one of these seafood places and then they think they're eating good ole home-grown wild Texas shrimp. And actually it's from Ecuador or Vietnam or South America.

Diane Wilson [00:00:41] And so, one, you have the Texas fishermen or the American fishermen that are having to fight these imports that come from these shrimp farms. And and they've already shown that these shrimp farms are very destructive. Like you get these huge, they're almost like ponds. And because you need this huge amount of water, they get them very close to the coast. So they have absolutely destroyed whole mangroves.

Diane Wilson [00:01:16] I know when I was, I went to Taiwan and they had shrimp farms. And because it uses so much water, you start running scarce on water. So what they ended up doing, instead of pulling in fresh water, they were using contaminated water and they were flooding the same type of contaminated water over and over again. And you not only have antibiotics that are added to these, to these shrimp, that you're going into these basins to make them grow, to make them uniform.

Diane Wilson [00:01:54] But you also, what, what they really have a problem with, they've got all these viruses and some of them will absolutely species jump. So it's, I mean, it's, they not only destroy and kill the shrimp crop, but they can species jump. Like if you have a shrimp farm that's on the edge of the water and they escape and they are usually, they are exotic shrimp and they get out and they have this type of virus. This species jump, is they can jump from shrimp. They can jump to the crab. They can jump to the fish.

Diane Wilson [00:02:35] And you know, and, you know, it's, it's just like chemicals that you put out into the environment. It's like they don't know what these viruses do. It's like they don't know what these chemicals do. And so you have got no idea what you are setting loose.

Diane Wilson [00:02:51] But it's like the bottom line is profit. And, and I know it's, it's a huge profit. And, you know, and like a lot of the shrimp imported into the United States, there's, there's no tariffs on it. There's no taxes on it. And so shrimpers, what it boils down to, shrimpers are paying, are getting paid like what they were getting four decades ago. You know, like they're getting 80 cents for some big shrimp.

Diane Wilson [00:03:20] And, you know, there is I don't believe there's any other occupation that you can be getting the same thing for your, for your product that you were getting 20 years ago. You know, I don't think there's another single occupation. It's it goes that with inflation, you know, you're you can at least feed your kids and pay your boat payments. And, and the shrimpers can't do it. They cannot afford to do that.

Diane Wilson [00:03:50] You know, and I know just right across the San Antonio Bay right here is, there's a shrimp farm there. And they put in this huge ponds. And and there was. We were trying to fight the permitting because we were afraid about these exotic shrimp getting out and putting in.

Diane Wilson [00:04:13] And they already had viruses. They had them they had viruses in Brownsville and they had some viruses in the Palacios ones. And we were afraid of these having viruses, too.

Diane Wilson [00:04:25] And, you know, Parks and Wildlife and all these agencies were gung-ho on getting them there. You know, they saw this as economic, economic development. And the thing was, is the man was over there putting in shrimp crops and he wasn't even permitted.

Diane Wilson [00:04:40] And you can always tell they're doing it because you can see the birds, because the birds on the bay, when they start hitting, hitting the water, they see shrimp and they're going after the shrimp. And, you know, all you had to do was look across the bay, or get pretty close to it, and you could see all of these birds working.

Diane Wilson [00:04:59] But, but the man was so isolated, is that nobody knew what he was doing. There was nobody checking on what he was doing. So he could pretty much do exactly what he wanted.

Diane Wilson [00:05:09] And, you know, when all these, they have huge discharges. I think the discharge of this shrimp farm in Palacios, it amounted to the flow of a river.

Diane Wilson [00:05:20] And you've got all this sediment, and this possible viruses and you got shrimp escaping and you got bacteria and you got all these type of chemicals that they have to use to try to kill and contain some of this stuff.

Diane Wilson [00:05:38] And it's just going right out there into the Gulf of Mexico.