Thread: Foot-long shrimp roaming the Gulf of Mexico

Foot-long cannibal shrimp roaming the Gulf of Mexico?

RYAN GORMAN
Friday, June 15, 2012

There's a new predator prowling the Gulf of Mexico and south Atlantic coastlines -- giant cannibal shrimp.

Asian Tiger shrimp that can grow to a foot long and weigh upwards of one pound are being sighted more frequently and experts are worried they will wipe out native shrimp populations.

"They are more aggressive shrimp than native shrimp and then tend to feed more actively," David Knott, who is a member of the South Atlantic Regional Panel's Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force, told The Times-Picayune.

The black and white striped shrimp have begun to concern experts from North Carolina to Texas, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"We can confirm there was nearly a tenfold jump in reports of Asian Tiger shrimp in 2011," USGS biologist Pam Fuller is quoted as saying on NOAA's website, ""And they are probably even more prevalent than reports suggest, because the more fisherman and other locals become accustomed to seeing them, the less likely they are to report them."

Fuller runs NOAA's nonindigenous aquatic species database. She is part of a team of people studying how the Tiger Shrimp's high growth and spawning rates will affect local ecosystems.

"The Asian Tiger shrimp represents yet another potential marine invader capable of altering fragile marine ecosystems," NOAA marine ecologist James Morris said on the agency's site.

The lobster-sized shrimp are edible, reports NOLA.com, there may even be a domestic market for them.

The monster shrimp eat almost anything in their path. They eat crustaceans, small crabs, shrimp, mollusks and oysters, reports The Times Picayune.

"In the bayou right here, they caught two of them," Kim Chauvin, owner of David Chauvin's Seafood, told NOLA.com, "it's not just in the gulf."

The tiger shrimp are believed to have broken free from a shrimp farm in the Caribbean Sea of the coast of the Dominican Republic during a hurricane in 2005 and rode currents to the gulf, according to The Times Picayune.

The giant shrimp are native to Asian and Australian coasts in the Pacific Ocean. They were first seen in American waters in 1988 off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. They were not seen again until a fisherman caught one in the Mississippi Sound in 2006, reports NOAA.

NOAA asks anyone who sights a tiger shrimp to contact the USGS, freeze the catch and donate it to Fuller's study.

NOAA has not designated tiger shrimp an established species in U.S. waters yet, scientists are not sure whether currents are carrying them in or if they are actually breeding, reports the agency's site.

Scientists are going to begin studying their DNA with the hope of determining their origin.

Foot-long cannibal shrimp roaming the Gulf of Mexico? - New York Daily News

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