All You Can Eat Shrimp

Each year I marvel at the "all you can eat shrimp" and "endless shrimp" commercials that flood our airways.  I know that for many people this is the only time of the year that they would consider splurging on a seafood dinner out.  But the next time you splurge on an all you can eat shrimp feast or see the mounds for shrimp at your local Chinese buffet, you might want ask yourself "How is this possible?" Well, if you really want to know, then Kennedy Warne's book Let Them Eat Shrimp makes the connection between the shrimp on your plate and salt-water forest know as mangroves.

Mangroves are considered the supermarket of the sea, providing shellfish, crabs, honey, timber and charcoal for coastal communities from Florida to South America to New Zealand, but mangroves are being destroyed to make way for shrimp farms. But the story is not that simple and Warne tells the complex dilemma of one farmer whose aquaculture income lets him educate his children, but the cost of such ventures hangs heavy in drinking-water wells now ruined with saltwater and land too salt-tainted to grow food.

However, Warne's book is not all doom and gloom he finds hope too, in restoration projects and a complex but encouraging example of Tanzanian villagers struggling to balance competing local opinions in managing mangroves. What does this mean for your yearly seafood splurge?  Well, enjoy but be aware that cheap and abundant seafood has an ecological cost.