October 30, 2013 — This year was looking like a windfall for Georgia shrimpers. The production of Asian farmed shrimp was down after a bacterial infection swept through Thailand’s ponds. The resulting shortage of imports drove prices up.
“Everybody was looking forward to fall,” said Herbert “Truck” McIver Jr., a McIntosh County shrimper who works on the Sundown. “That’s almost a guarantee. It would’ve been an awesome year with the price. Prices are probably like $1 more (per pound) than last year.”
That’s not how it’s panning out.
Instead of celebrating, Georgia shrimpers are finding so few shrimp they’re planning to petition for disaster status. And they’re looking for answers to what’s devastating the catch from Charleston to Jacksonville, a shrimp disease called black gill.
History of black gill
The condition, in which shrimp develop black spots on their gills, first showed up in Georgia shrimp in the 1990s. Since then it’s waxed and waned, but the last several years have been bad ones, shrimpers say. This year up to 90 percent of the shrimp in some trawls have been infected.
Research from pond-raised shrimp indicates black gill has many causes, including bacteria, fungus, lack of nutrients, an overdose of copper or too much sediment. None of those are implicated in Georgia wild shrimp. Instead, the culprit is a single-celled parasite called a ciliate.
Too small to detect with the naked eye, ciliates are about 100 times bigger than bacteria, making them easy to see with a microscope. When infected with ciliates, shrimp fight back by encrusting the parasites inside the gills.
Read the full story at the Savannah Morning News