{"id":4179,"date":"2012-01-06T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=4179"},"modified":"2013-11-15T20:33:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-16T02:33:58","slug":"tiger-prawns-roar-into-the-gulf-of-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/06\/tiger-prawns-roar-into-the-gulf-of-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiger Prawns Roar into the Gulf of Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo Courtesy of Jim Gossen, Louisiana Foods - Global Seafood Source<\/p>

An Asian Tiger Prawn caught last September near Little Lake in Larose, LA<\/p><\/div>\n

The Asian Tiger Prawn can grow over a foot long. It’s a species from the Western Pacific Ocean that first showed up off the coast of Alabama in 2006, when a single, solitary prawn was reported. If the story ended there, we wouldn\u2019t have much to talk about.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next year in 2007, you had some pop up in Louisiana just one or two, in 2008, three or four, [and in] 2009 a couple,” Leslie Hartman, the Matagorda Bay Ecosystem leader with Texas Parks and Wildlife, told Stateimpact Texas.<\/p>\n\n

But that was just the start.<\/p>\n

“Suddenly, this past August when we opened our fall in-shore shrimp season the numbers suddenly exploded. We have gotten over 100 reports of Tiger prawns,\u201d said Martin Bourgeois, a Marine Fisheries Biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.<\/p>\n

Bourgeois says for every report he receives there are probably three or four tiger prawn catches that go unreported. This last year reports started coming in from Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Texas we\u2019ve only had reports so far in our offshore waters,” said Hartman. ” We expect that we will be catching some inside of our bays in the near future. We haven\u2019t so far, and that\u2019s a good thing for Texas Shrimp.\u201d
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why is that a good thing? For one, the Tiger Prawns\u2019 diet is a lot like humans. It likes to eat shrimp.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we have some concerns that they\u2019ll be active predators on our shrimp and crabs,” said Hartman.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are still a lot of unknowns. But some researchers worry that the prawns will introduce new shrimp diseases to the ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Yet the prawns are reportedly delicious. Louisiana\u2019s Marty Bourgeouis says that has its upside.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen Tiger Prawns in the seafood case, priced at $20 a pound. And then I turn around and look at fresh shrimp a kiosk in that same supermarket priced at $5.99 a pound,” said Bourgeois.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though marketing the prawns could have a downside.<\/p>\n

“That might be nice for the shrimpers, but it wont be nice for the ecology. Our fish are not designed to eat foot-long shrimp,” Hartman said.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the time being shrimpers don’t seem to be selling the tiger prawns they’ve run into.\u00a0\u201cNobody has brought them in to be sold. Most [shrimpers] will keep them for themselves or show them or give them to some of their friends or maybe eat them on the boat. They\u2019re not keeping them to where there\u2019s a market for them,\u201dJim Gossen, CEO of Houston-based Louisiana Foods told Stateimpact Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know it\u2019s alarming though, to find out that they\u2019re continuing to spread through the Gulf in more areas,” Gossen added.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Texas Parks and Wildlife\u2019s Hartman says the first step to containing the tiger prawns is to figure out where they came from. To that end, researchers are conducting genetic testing.<\/p>\n

For shrimpers who end up catching a tiger prawn and want to eat it, Hartman had these words of compromise:\u00a0\u201cIn all honesty I just need a little bit of the tissue. So if some people are saying \u201cHey I just would rather eat it!\u201d Let\u2019s talk. We can make a deal, I\u2019ll just take a little bit of the tissue and you can go ahead and boil them up,” she said.<\/p>\n

Hartman believes genetic testing will yield some answers by the end of this year about how the prawns got to the Gulf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Asian Tiger Prawn can grow over a foot long. It’s a species from the Western Pacific Ocean that first showed up off the coast of Alabama in 2006, when a single, solitary prawn was reported. If the story ended there, we wouldn\u2019t have much to talk about. But it doesn\u2019t. \u201cThe next year in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":4192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[101,100,102],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4179"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4196,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions\/4196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}