Shrimp Trawling Sucks.

Steve and I left a little earlier than normal, really only 10 minutes, but it changes our perspective in the morning.  I had the south end, and lately have been patrolling South Beach first.  Since it was high tide at 6AM, the Boneyard would be impassable by truck.  Instead, I hopped in the kayak and began the short trip to South Middle.  The sunrise was absolutely beautiful this morning.  A huge, bright red sun slowly lifted over the horizon as I made my way through the marsh.  While the island offers many splendors, it's the little things that make us smile.

My patrol had no crawls, so instead I picked up trash as I checked on our nests.  I made a special effort to remove trash around the nest sites so I don't have to see it every day.  The stuff that washed up with the tide looks like household items, which immediately makes me blame the shrimp trawlers.  The season just opened yesterday, so now there are lots of boats close to shore.  Really close to shore.  When I first saw them yesterday, my heart sank.  There were at least 9 it one spot.  You can hear them, see guys walking on deck.  I know there are some that are responsible, but, I know that there are some that don't care if a bottle of water falls over the side.  We'll see if it continues.  On the way back, I accidentally ran over a ghost crab with the ATV.  A lot of them run up the beach when they see us coming and run right in front of us.  Rather than swerve, I usually hope they make it through.  Today, he wasn't so lucky and would later become blue crab bait.  Then I found an egg shell of some shore bird.  Brown and speckled but too big to be a Wilson's Plover. Willet maybe?

South Beach was easy, just two false crawls.  Just as I was getting the coordinates of my last one, Steve called to tell me he found a stranded Spotted Eagle Ray.  We decided that he should call Mark, since we believed it to be the result of the shrimp trawlers.  Mark said the same, and that it was probably stranded for a reason.  He told Steve that he boarded some trawlers yesterday and one pulled up a Manta Ray.  Steve told me later that he was able to move the ray to the water, which was no easy feat.  The ray was about 5 feet wide.  He hung out with it in the water for about 15 minutes and let it go.  We're not too optimistic, and I hope I don't see it stranded tomorrow morning.  Another tragedy of the trawling.

Shrimp trawling has the highest rate of incidental catch of non-target species.  Basically, the two nets go to the bottom and scoop up anything it their path, on the bottom and through the water column.  Anything that's not shrimp is discarded, often dying or dead.  Sea turtles drown, even though there are Turtle Excluder Devices at the back of the nets.  Often the TEDs aren't in position and therefore don't work correctly.  We've heard stories of the shrimpers killing the sea turtles that they bring up so they don't catch them again.  It's horrific.  The scary part for us is that our adult sea turtle population is nearshore, waiting to lay eggs.  Any female lost right now is detrimental.  Seeing the trawlers has reminded me of why I stopped eating shrimp a long time ago.  I forgot for a while, but now I see the harm.  Please think before you decide to eat shrimp again.  To learn how harmful the shrimp industry really is, check out ShrimpSuck.org.