May 26, 2012 – Grab a fork and some cocktail sauce. A lot of cocktail sauce. North Carolina waters may be on the brink of a population explosion of an invasive species that is troubling, tasty and titanic.
Well, titanic for a shrimp.
There has been an ominous spike in catches here and across the Southeast of Asian tiger shrimp, a Pacific and Indian Ocean species that can grow more than a foot long and weigh nearly a pound.
Throughout the shrimp’s new range along the Gulf Coast and South Atlantic, reports increased from 32 in 2010 to 331 last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“We’ve been monitoring it for some time, and in 2011 we saw several major increases in the Southeast,” said James Morris, an ecologist who studies invasive species for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science in Beaufort. “When you see a sharp jump like that, it’s a first alarm that we may be seeing an invasion.”
North Carolina’s coast is basically the northern extreme of the tiger shrimp’s invasive range. They can’t live in water that’s cooler than about 55 degrees, Morris said.
Read the full story at the Rock Hill Herald.