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20391 Tybee

SHRIMP – A Tybee Tail By Jimmy Prosser - Photos by William Harrell When people come to the beach they want local everything! Local people, local ideas, local souvenirs and local FOOD! Specifically Shrimp, Shrimp, Shrimp! Recently, I was privileged to sit down with Pat Matthews, a Savannah/ Tybee native who grew up here on the docks. Pat currently oversees Tybee’s shrimping operation, exporting into Savannah and across the country, and moving wild caught local shrimp just down the dock to some of Tybee’s favorite restaurants. Pat has been working these docks his entire life. His father and grandfather worked the same ones as well. It’s easy to tell the Matthews have been a large part of Tybee, Savannah, and shrimping. No one would have thought back in 1947, when Pat’s grandfather built the current dock, that Pat would still be over-seeing the operations today. Since 1947 the art of shrimping hasn’t changed much. Modern equipment still resembles what our docks were using back 70 years ago! Pat’s family has been vital to the seafood industry in Savannah, from the shrimp docks, to seafood markets, Oyster factories, and Grouper and Snapper boats. At the Matthews families peak, they oversaw more than FIFTEEN 70’ Trawlers. To give you an idea, those boats would bring home combined nearly 600,000 pounds of shrimp a year!!! Now that’s a lot of heads to be popping off! Pat has been doing this his entire life. He took over for his father back in 1993, at the end of the local shrimping era. “In 1995, Bill Clinton put money into Asia to start shrimp farms,” Pat states, and that was the beginning of what was nearly the end. In 1995, Georgia was proudly home to more than 2,000 shrimp trawlers on our 100 mile coastline; that’s a lot of boats. Today there are less than 100 trawlers in the State of Georgia. 8 TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | AUG 2017 “Before shrimp became an import from Asia, we used to joke that imported shrimp came from North Carolina and Florida,” says Pat. If only that was our biggest problem to date. With the decrease in local shrimpers, some here in the United States have turned to starting shrimp farms. Common in Texas and the Carolinas, not only are the farms hurting the economy, they are also poisoning our environment as well. Pat told me, “Pick up a wild caught shrimp today and you’ll see it has Black Gill Disease.” Black Gill Disease is a parasite that is often found in shrimp farming. While the current infestation can be traced to South Carolina, there is not much hope. The parasite attaches itself to the shrimp. A sick shrimp will shed its skin, if you will, and lose the parasite. Unfortunately, the newly released parasite will latch onto the nearest shrimp, often the one whom has just shed it. “It’s not harmful to humans, you can’t get sick from it, but it’s killing our shrimp,” Pat told me. This is by far the worst year they’ve ever had. While farming has not only brought disease to our waters, it’s also brought in foreign species from being illegally dumped. Pat solemnly joked, “The best time of year to catch Tiger Shrimp around Tybee is October.” The problem here is Tiger Shrimp are not native to Georgia, the Carolinas, Central America, the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, or Africa. Tiger Shrimp are found between Asia and Australia. Yet they seem to be thriving in our warm waters. In perfect conditions (water between 70 and 90 degrees), a shrimp’s life cycle is 90 days. I don’t know about any of you, but I couldn’t swim from India to Tybee in 90 days. Disease and invasion aren’t the only things hurting our local industry. Since 1995, the cost of shrimp has gone down. Yes. You read that right. Like cassettes, VHS tapes, and Beanie Babies, shrimp is becoming cheap.


20391 Tybee
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