STOUGHTON, Mass. — March 13, 2013 — A shrimp grows in Stoughton. Actually, it’s more like 1,500 pounds of them.
Miles from the ocean, in a non-descript industrial park, Pacific white shrimp are frolicking in 82-degreepurified Atlantic seawater and getting plump on special feed. It’s warm in the room that houses five big open tanks. That’s the way these babies like it, and James Tran and Peter Howard, the masterminds behind Sky 8 Shrimp Farm, are determined to give them what they like. In turn, Tran and Howard hope to reap tremendous rewards when the shrimp are harvested and sold; they’re expecting their first crop this month and already have plans to expand.
Sky 8 is the first of its kind in New England. The owners expect to capitalize on the appetite for both shrimp and local foods. They say that the shrimp are being raised using sustainable, environmentally sound methods that don’t destroy any natural resources or circulate dirty water back into the ocean, without hormones, antibiotics, chemicals, or preservatives. They will also be sold fresh, never frozen.
The number 8 in the name comes from the fact that this is the 8th such shrimp farm in the United States. “Sky” is from the company Skyworks Solutions, where James Tran’s day job is designing semiconductors. And also, says Tran, because “you know, sky’s the limit.”
Americans certainly seem to have a bottomless appetite for the little pink crustaceans. Matt Thompson, a senior aquaculture specialist at the New England Aquarium, cites the figures: “Shrimp is the most consumed seafood in America, with 4.2 pounds per capita consumed in 2011; 1.3 billion pounds of shrimp are consumed yearly” in the United States. We clearly love our shrimp, but where it comes from can be a bit problematic.
Years ago, shrimp was a pricey delicacy. Today it still isn’t cheap, but it’s affordable enough that certain restaurants sometimes offer it in endless quantities for around $15. A vast increase in imported shrimp over the past several years has brought down the price. Thompson says around 77 percent of the shrimp we eat comes from overseas, and of that, about 85 percent is farmed.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe