Witnessing an Archetype / Eric Horan
During September and October in the 1980’s one might have seen several shrimpers along the oceanfront waters at Hilton Head and other neighboring barrier islands. Today we’re lucky to see two or three boats. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) reports that shrimp trawling licenses are now about 1/4 of what they were in the 1980’s. It’s easy to point to market pressure from lower priced Chinese and farm imports and skyrocketing increases in all associated expenses: maintaining a boat, labor and fuel, along with overall increased cost of living.
It was an early morning in September of 1981 when I first set foot on the beach at Hilton Head. For a Colorado boy on his first trip to the southeast, this was a memorable moment. Walking down the beach path, I could see through the sand dunes and sea oats to a dozen shrimp boats at work, just off shore.
The shrimp industry has been in decline since. Locals who know the difference in local versus imported seafood prey this does not happen. What can the public do? We can buy fresh, local shrimp when preparing meals at home and eat shrimp out only from restaurants that serve only fresh local shrimp. We can learn more about the industries plight and share with others who maybe have not tasted fresh caught shrimp or witnessed the action of a shrimp trawler up close.
Since my first encounter watching shrimp boats, I have made hundreds of images of these trawlers, while onboard or from a following craft.
During my seasonal tours we spend anywhere from 30 minutes to and hour following the boats. I keep the boat beside the nets opening. And when the dolphins breach for air, they surface right beside the boat. Periodically, for a brief moment, they shoot us a look, and the camera motors whirr! Again and again they appear briefly and disappear to scurry around inside the net for fish and return back to us with a big blow. All the while the terns remind us of how helicopters and missiles came to be. They hover then dive into the water repeatedly for shrimp and small fish stirred by the net.
Sharing these photo tours following the shrimpers is pure pleasure. It’s one thing to eat live local South Carolina shrimp for the first time and feel a hankering henceforth. But when you have the chance to follow them or ride along with a working crew, aboard a shrimp boat you may well become a patron of the shrimp industry archetype forever.
* Learn more on Facebook by checking out groups: The Salty Shrimper, Shrimp boats of the Lowcountry, Shrimpers of the south (SOS) and Beaufort Shrimp Festival
