The favored technique is bottom-trawling, a practice that plows up the seabed, upsetting the whole marine food chain. Meanwhile, we landlubbers have a habit of discharging all kinds of pollutants into coastal waters and estuaries, where shrimp breed. So we overfish and poison the wild shrimp. Shrimp farming is a soaring industry, so profitable that there is a huge temptation to cram shrimp into artificial ponds as if they were chickens in a modern chicken-factory. Furthermore, in the growing global market there are few inspection points for seafood, so shrimp diseases are spreading around the world.
Processors import infected shrimp and heedlessly discard heads and shells into local waters.
Viruses once known only in Asia are showing up in Texas. South American viruses are appearing in Asia. Both wild and farmed shrimp populations, their immune systems depressed by pollution and by reduced genetic diversity, are exposed, like the native Americans who first encountered smallpox, to completely new diseases. Well, that day was so depressing that my colleagues and I talked about other things on the drive back from Boston. One woman told us about her recent stay in Zambia.