Filed under: Caribbean, Newspapers, Shellfish

Though I am personally not a big fan of seafood in general and shrimp in particular, I know that I am in the minority on this one. Most of the world’s population loves shrimp. This fact plays out in a bad way in Jamaica.

For years, people in the mountains of Jamaica were able to catch giant shrimp in the rivers there. They would catch them in the old fashioned way, which was, of course, slow and difficult. And, just like throwing dynamite into the ocean to catch fish in Asia, someone came up with a quick new way to catch a lot of shrimp quickly for some fast cash. They dump some kind of poison into the river, instantly killing the shrimp (and everything else), which then float to the top. They’re easy to catch that way.

The good news is that a lot of local people have joined a movement to stop this crime. They’re taking steps to catch perpetrators, educate local judges (so offenders won’t be simply released), and stop the poachers from selling their ill gotten gains at the market. Hopefully they’ll be able to put a stop to this before the shrimp is gone for good or the environment is permanently damaged or both.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.