Saving Seafood

Southern states lay down the law on seafood labeling

June 30, 2025 — Over the course of the past year, Dave Williams, a commercial fishery scientist and founder of SeaD Consulting, has been testing shrimp in restaurants all around the Gulf states, Georgia, and the Carolinas to find out if they are selling imported farmed shrimp as Gulf shrimp. The results have been astounding, with restaurants tested in Charleston, South Carolina, showing a 90 percent fraud rate.  

Williams’s work, sponsored by the industry group Southern Shrimp Alliance, has prompted the passage of new laws and increased enforcement of existing laws aimed at protecting the U.S. domestic shrimp fleet.  

Alabama’s Seafood Labeling Law was passed in May 2024 and took effect on October 1, 2024. It requires food service establishments including restaurants, grocery store delis and seafood retailers, to list the country of origin of its fish and shellfish, or that the product was imported.

The law also requires labels to state if the seafood was farm raised or wild caught.  Suppliers must provide the seafood’s country of origin to the restaurants and delis. The law is enforced by the state Department of Public Health and consumers who believe there is a violation of the law can file a complaint via an online form.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

“Shrimp Fraud” Allegations Are Rocking the Restaurant World. We Talked to the Company Blowing the Whistle.

June 20, 2025 — Last week, the Texas-based firm SeaD Consulting released the results from a study that shook the culinary scene in Charleston, South Carolina. A team of undercover testers had paid visits to randomly selected seafood restaurants around the city and used on-the-spot genetic testing to determine whether the shrimp came from local waters. The results were shocking in a town that prides itself on abundant fresh catch: Forty out of the forty-four restaurants it tested, the company reported, served imported, farm-raised shrimp.

Charleston isn’t the first market the company has scrutinized since ramping up its testing efforts last August. SeaD has also visited New Orleans, Savannah, Tampa–St. Petersburg, and Wilmington, North Carolina, among others. Of those cities, New Orleans fared best, with only 13 percent of restaurants misrepresenting their shrimp (largely due to more stringent food labeling laws in Louisiana, according to SeaD). Savannah and Wilmington each tallied 77 percent inauthenticity. In Tampa, just two restaurants of forty-five were serving Gulf shrimp, the firm reported.

Since the Charleston bombshell dropped, the plot has thickened. Local shrimpers have come forward to vouch for clients who buy from them, since SeaD didn’t reveal the names of the forty establishments that served imported shrimp. And the S.C. Shrimpers Association has announced a lawsuit against those unidentified restaurants (referring to them as “John Doe Restaurants” in the complaint) in which it accused them of false advertising and in violation of South Carolina’s Unfair Trade Practices Act.

With the industry still reeling, we chatted with SeaD founder Dave Willams and his daughter, chief operations officer Erin Williams, to find out exactly how the team conducted its testing, if the Charleston results surprised them, and what changes they hope to see in the shrimping and restaurant industry. And, yes, they know where they’re headed next, but they’re not saying.

Read the full article at Garden and Gun

South Carolina shrimpers sue local restaurants over shrimp fraud

June 18, 2025 — The South Carolina Shrimpers Association has sued roughly 40 restaurants in the U.S. state, claiming they were falsely presenting the imported shrimp they sell as locally sourced.

“It’s illegal to say that a product is from South Carolina when it’s not, and similarly, federal law prohibits the mislabeling of the origins of seafood. It’s simply illegal at a state and federal level,” South Carolina Shrimpers Association Attorney Gedney Howe said, according to local news outlet WCSC-TV.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

SOUTH CAROLINA: McMaster, Fry call on White House to uphold ban on offshore oil and gas drilling

June 12, 2025 — Some of Donald Trump’s closest political allies are urging him to continue a moratorium on offshore gas and drilling leases along the South Carolina coast as the White House pursues its broader domestic energy policy.

“There is no question that our country must unleash American energy, expanding domestic production, cutting red tape and reassuring our energy independence,” U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, R-7th District, wrote in a Tuesday latter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “At the same time, I believe energy development must be pursued in a way that respects the distinct economic and environmental realities of each region.”

Fry, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, requested that Burgum keep in place a 2020 Trump memorandum exempting South Carolina from offshore oil and gas projects until at least 2032.

Read the full article at WBTW

SOUTH CAROLINA: South Carolina rolls out its own red snapper rules

May 20. 2025 — South Carolina will no longer follow federal management standards in state waters aimed at protecting red snapper populations that are still recovering after years of overfishing off the south Atlantic coast.

Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed S.B. 219 on May 8 taking full authority over the state’s snapper-grouper fishery — composed of 55 species — within 3 miles of the South Carolina coast. The law specifically references red snapper and black sea bass, both of which are highly sought after by recreational fishermen.

“This law reflects South Carolina’s commitment to common-sense, homegrown solutions” to fishing regulation, McMaster said in a statement issued by sportfishing groups. “Our anglers deserve a system that’s fair, science-driven, and tailored to our state’s unique waters, not a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Read the full artile at E&E News

New taxes are coming for imported shrimp. SC shrimpers say it’s about time.

December 3, 2024 — South Carolina shrimpers will begin to feel some relief from the pressures of cheap, imported frozen shrimp.

The U.S. International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce will impose added taxes on the seafood product that’s flooded the market in recent years.

For shrimpers, it’s a welcome reprieve from the years of price gouging that’s run many fishermen out of business.

For consumers, it can mean higher prices on the frozen warmwater shrimp commonly found at grocery stores like Walmart and Costco.

The influx of imported frozen shrimp and unfair trade practices have injured the domestic shrimping industry, the United States International Trade Commission ruled in November.

Read the full story at The Post and Courier

SOUTH CAROLINA: New bill to expand federal relief eligibility for fishing/shrimping industry

October 21, 2024 — A newly-filed bill looks to bring support to shrimpers and fisherman as the industry struggles to stay afloat in a market overcome by foreign competitors.

“The influx of imported shrimp has resulted in the decline of our fleets and massive job losses and our local businesses are devastated,” said Bryan Jones, the Vice President of the South Carolina Shrimper’s Association.

Standing in front of the shrimp boats of Shem Creek, US Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R) introduced the Protect American Fisheries Act on Friday.

Read the full article at Count on 2 News

SOUTH CAROLINA: Despite requests, Gov. Henry McMaster hasn’t declared an emergency on shrimp dumping. Here’s why.

September 25, 2024 — Lowcountry shrimpers are in trouble.

It’s a message local fishermen have spread with urgency in recent years: If not for intervention at the state and federal level, South Carolina’s shrimping industry may soon be washed away in a storm of economic upheaval created in large part by the dumping of foreign shrimp into the U.S. market.

Solutions to that problem have proved difficult to navigate.

Several coastal communities thought they were on the right path late last year. By the end of 2023, four Lowcountry municipalities — Beaufort and Bluffton along with McClellanville and Mount Pleasant — sent letters urging Gov. Henry McMaster to declare an economic disaster due to imported shrimp dumping. Now, as we get deeper into 2024, the governor has yet to make that declaration.

The gesture by the municipalities was both a symbolic show of support and a genuine effort to enact change from state leaders. But, in reality, it is not within the governor’s power to fulfill the requests because the economic disaster caused by shrimp dumping did not begin with a natural disaster.

Read the full article at The Post and Courier 

Can US seafood industry revive? Mayor and fishmonger Larry Toomer has a recipe.

September 25, 2024 — Day after day, the piles of shucked shells slowly become tiny mountains behind Bluffton Oyster Co., a gray clapboard shack where a crew of fast hands pries away at oysters and crabs, a bounty bound for local markets and eateries.

In many ways, Bluffton’s May River waterfront here is a throwback to bygone days when local fishermen and fish houses provided most of America’s seafood. Now, like a pearl inside an oyster, the smooth, shiny prospect of renewal – of sustainability and food self-sufficiency – awaits discovery.

Helming the charge for renewal is Bluffton, South Carolina’s new Mayor Larry Toomer, the oyster shack’s owner, who sees as his mandate preserving and linking a working waterfront to the region’s growing suburbs. Why does this gambit matter beyond America’s Low Country? Because the seafood unloaded here plays a crucial role in the nation’s health and security, Mayor Toomer says.

“I used to think nuclear war was our biggest threat,” he says. “Now I think it’s our ability to feed ourselves if something goes wrong.”

Aside from coastal recreational opportunities, Americans have become largely disconnected from the ocean’s riches. In fact, the United States is the world’s second-biggest commercial fishery. But the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health doesn’t even mention seafood as an asset.

Experts say that “blue food” isn’t a part of a broader conversation about America’s food security or food system transformation largely because of a common public perception that fish, oysters, and shrimp are a luxury, not a necessity. At the same time, the gap between fish catchers and fish eaters – no more “my neighbor is a shrimper” – has widened.

The challenge, says Mayor Toomer, is a sense among local fishers that “we’ve basically been left to die” even as seafood consumption has risen from 12 pounds to 20 pounds per capita in the past 30 years.

Read the full article at the The Christian Science Monitor

Good news: Overfishing is at an all-time low. Bad news: Fish species face new threats.

August 5, 2024 — Most fisheries in South Carolina are doing well. Their populations are mostly healthy, thanks to effective government oversight and the caution of fishermen. But some species still are struggling, and officials suspect warming waters have something to do with it.

In the South Atlantic Fishery, which extends from North Carolina to Florida, red porgy and red grouper are overfished. Red snapper, snowy grouper and gag are overfished and subject to overfishing, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries’ latest assessment of federally managed fish species.

When a stock is subject to overfishing, it means too many fish are being taken. When a stock is overfished, it means the fish population is too low and needs to be rebuilt, said Kelly Denit, director of NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Sustainable Fisheries.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, first passed in 1976 and reauthorized in 2007, requires the regional fishery management council to take immediate action once an assessment reveals overfishing, said Kerry Marhefka, co-owner of Abundant Seafood and member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

“We can’t manage the fish,” Marhefka said. “What we’re managing are the fishermen.”

This means changing the annual catch limits for recreational and commercial fishermen, or implementing area closures to give those stocks a chance to rebuild, she said.

Read the full article at The Post and Courier