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As a consequence of the great economic and institutional volatility experienced during the last two decades, Venezuela has registered low economic growth rates that hindered the development of a competitive non-oil export sector. One of the few exceptions is the emergence, expansion, and consolidation of the shrimp industry which is dominated by both national and international firms. Although the Venezuelan shrimp production has not attained the same importance as its counterparts in countries like China, Vietnam, and Thailand, it is among the most important regional players in that field in Latin America, behind countries such as Brasil, Ecuador, and Colombia. This chapter explores the competitiveness of the shrimp industry using cluster analysis. It highlights how the emerging shrimp cluster in Venezuela lacks the tools for cooperation between its producers and the support institutions that could enhance its productivity and guarantee its long-term consolidation.

This introductory chapter places the book's ethnographic study of Louisiana shrimp fishers in the context of the larger body of research on the dynamic relationships between occupational decline, community, and culture. It traces the evolving structure of the shrimping industry and its impact on the identity and culture of its current participants. It then turns to the crisis suffered by local shrimp fishers today: the increased supply import of foreign, farm-bred shrimp that has likewise increased consumer demand. From there the study narrows down by grouping the responses of domestic shrimp fishers to the import crisis into three categories: the “persisters” who remain in the industry despite the crisis, the “exiters” who have left the industry outright, and the “adaptive innovators,” who remain in the industry but change their practices to suit shifting economic conditions.

Many organisms living in the oceans or in salt lakes are hyporegulators, meaning that they maintain their body fluids hypo-osmotically to the external medium. Marine fish hyporegulate by drinking the external medium and transporting sodium and chloride ions outward across the gills. Marine reptiles and birds use salt glands in the head to transport hyperosmotic fluids outward. Marine mammals are able to produce hyperosmotic urine in the kidneys. Insects use portions of the hindgut to actively transport ions out of their hemolymph. Brine shrimp are the champion hyporegulators of the animal kingdom. They use salt glands to rid their bodies of the salts accumulated in waters many times more concentrated than the oceans.

This concluding chapter discusses the potential implications of the BP oil spill for the continuation of the shrimp fishing industry. While the degree to which the oil spill will impact the fishing industry is yet unknown, it has not affected how the fishers arrive at the fundamental decisions that they make in response to change. They go through a careful calculation of costs and benefits—both monetary and cultural—as they grapple with what their next move will be; but no matter the impetus for change, the outcomes remain the same: persisting is toil, exit is tragedy, and innovation is risky and unpredictable.

This chapter opens with a surprising discovery of a temporary toad habitat, illustrating scientists’ never ceasing wonder of the natural world and the creatures found there. The temporary nature of vernal pools and their critical role in the life cycle of amphibians and reptiles is highlighted throughout the chapter. Vernal pool ecology is described as the pools’ water levels change over the course of the year. How those changes are marked by the animals that depend upon this vanishing ecosystem highlights remarkable evolutionary adaptations. Stories of salamander brigades and turtle hunters illustrate the varied nature of vernal pool ecosystems. Unfortunately, the supposed temporary nature of these wetlands often means they are overlooked and not protected.

This chapter looks at whether the World Trade Organization (WTO) really is a “technocracy” through the lens of “trade-environment” issues, focusing on the Shrimp-Turtle case. It begins with an overview of the democratic deficit critique as it applies to the WTO. It then turns to describing the deliberative features of two of the three principal functions of the WTO-dispute settlement, and what has been called the “missing middle” between the negotiation of treaties and dispute settlement. The fourth section is devoted to an analysis of the Shrimp-Turtle case. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how “technocratic” the WTO really is. It argues that it is not dominated by a “trade elite” to the extent that critics have charged, but the impact of environmental activists does not necessarily make it a more deliberatively democratic institution.

This prologue recounts the author's experiences in Bayou Crevette in Louisiana. It details her firsthand experiences with a community and culture that thrives on the local shrimping industry. The economy of Bayou Crevette relies primarily on shrimp fishing, around which the town's other livelihoods and cultural markers revolve—from its abundance of boat-building industries to its seafood festivals as well as to the general sense of pride and self-sufficiency characteristic of its citizens. The gradual erosion of this central factor echoes that of the author's childhood experiences watching her own community deteriorate after the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s. These experiences form the context for the struggles of a local industry already crippled prior to the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Shrimp are a much desired and nutritious food product with a high economic value: capture-biomass ratio. The most important shrimp fisheries take place in marine habitats and are dominated by estuary-dependent “warm-water” species of penaeid and sergestid shrimps. Fishing with otter and beam trawls accounts for the major part of shrimp production, as these gears target species that form large schools over relatively level open ocean bottoms. Bycatch and discard of nontarget species are a particular problem of shrimp trawling, which disrupts bottom communities and removes juveniles of ecologically and commercially important finfish. The destructive effect of heavy trawls on the open soft-bottom habitats of most important species is not as severe as in other fisheries, given the rapid recovery of soft-bottom communities. Management of shrimp fisheries to prevent both growth and recruitment overfishing is based on models incorporating variables such as measures of growth, mortality, and climatic factors. Fishing efforts can be controlled by limiting access (e.g., number of fishers, vessels) and regulating seasonal closures of fishing grounds. Although there are signs of overfishing in some shrimp populations, the short life cycle (one to two years) with the rapid growth of major shrimp species makes them relatively resilient to overfishing. Conflicts between aquaculture and shrimp fisheries include economic competition and the biological impacts of shrimp aquaculture on natural shrimp populations. Protection and restoration of coastal wetlands, which serve as shrimp nurseries, are vital to the future of shrimp fisheries.

This chapter examines an unsuccessful struggle undertaken by Dalit fisherwomen to protect their existing entitlements to traditional fishing work, good health, and decent living standards by stopping the operation of a shrimp farm in their coastal village. It shows how these women’s collective strategies are not only continuously (re)shaped by their encounters with state and non-state actors, but also play out on an unequal political and economic terrain. Their relative lack of power and economic resources obstructs their ability to protect their meagre entitlements when these entitlements conflict with the state’s macro-economic policies. The disjuncture between state laws/policies and state practices, especially corruption, ingrains Dalit women’s exclusion and social inequalities in new ways. Concurrently, multiple interventions by NGO development brokers generate shifting entitlement discourses among the women, with consequences for the meanings women attribute to collective action.

This chapter begins with the concept of the evolution of the eye by natural selection as argued by Charles Darwin and others and goes on to describe vision in various life forms. The chapter describes the environment and ecosystem of the hydrothermal vent where the Rimicaris exoculata lives. This chapter also elaborates on the efforts of Denis Pelli and Steve Chamberlain, who hypothesized that Rimicaris uses its rudimentary eyes to sense thermal vents and that this ability helps it to feed on bacteria. The visual activity of Rimicaris, based on theoretical and biophysical perspectives, black body radiation, and correlations between the emission spectrum of the thermal vent and the absorption spectrum of rhodopsin are discussed in detail.

This chapter describes color vision, color blindness, true color blindness, and the perception of color due to variation in human visual pigment genes. This chapter discusses variation in impressionist painter Claude Monet's perception of color that came with age and the development of cataracts. The differences in gene sequences of visual pigments in different people result in different perceptions when looking at the same color. This difference, in perception of color, is even greater between humans and animals due to a variation of visual pigments. The eye of the mantis shrimp, with its trinocular vision, multitude of visual pigments, light polarization sensitivity, and its intricate movements, make it the animal with the most specialized and sophisticated eyes in the animal kingdom.

World War II fueled technologies for underwater listening, such as hydrophones, and Cold War antisubmarine strategies further rendered the oceans audible, noisy even. This novel ability to hear marine sounds radically transformed not only the discipline of oceanography but also the oceans themselves and the people listening. An examination of U.S. Navy ear-training manuals and sound recordings reveals continuities of testing protocols and ontologies between military oceanographers and marine biologists. Underwater listeners were additionally informed by musical training and technologies such as graphic representation and image processing software. In the oceanic soundscape, marine life was defined relative to Soviet vessels and was approached through an epistemology of error: plankton stood in the way of sound waves, shrimp distorted hydrophone receptions, and whales emitted enigmatically unclassifiable sounds that questioned existing sound signature catalogs. As technologies and data were disclosed to the biologists, this knowledge about error became scientific knowledge.

Few species are exclusively found in mangrove or seagrass habitats; most occur elsewhere and accumulate in mangroves or seagrasses for shelter or food. Mangroves, seagrasses, and other coastal marine habitats such as saltmarsh, coral reefs, and the open sea are linked through the movement of organisms between them, and because of the flow of dissolved and particulate organic matter and inorganic nutrients. Particularly important examples of linkage include the dependence of coastal fisheries, and shrimp aquaculture, on mangroves.

Mangroves and seagrasses supply valuable goods and services, including extraction of timber, food, and medicinal products, support for fisheries and aquaculture, and coastal protection. Mangroves have been valued at US$14 500/ha/year, seagrasses at US$27 000/ha/year. Despite this, both habitats are threatened. Mangrove losses currently run at around 1%/year, mainly through conversion to agriculture or aquaculture ponds, changes in hydrology, or destructive overexploitation. Sustainable management of mangrosve and seagrass resources is, however, possible, the forests of the Matang (Malaysia) being an example. Restoration of mangrove and seagrass habitats is also possible.

This chapter describes the taxonomy of Stomatopoda. Stomatopods, also known as mantis shrimps, because of their resemblance to a praying mantis, are a small order of marine malacostracan crustaceans related to shrimps, crabs, and lobsters. There are around 450 extant stomatopod species in the world and the majority of them live in tropical and sub-tropical regions, although a few species occur in temperate and boreal waters. The chapter covers their life cycle, ecology, and general morphology. It includes a section that indicates the systematic placement of the taxon described within the tree of life, and lists the key marine representative illustrated in the chapter (usually to genus or family level). This section also provides information on the taxonomic authorities responsible for the classification adopted, recent changes which might have occurred, and lists relevant taxonomic sources.

This chapter describes the taxonomy of Lophogastrida and Mysida, small shrimp-like crustaceans commonly known as ‘opossum shrimps’ because of the ventral brood pouch in the female. Because of their highly adaptive nature, they have progressively invaded new areas via new connections of water systems and through ballast water. The chapter covers their life cycle, ecology, and general morphology. It includes a section that indicates the systematic placement of the taxon described within the tree of life, and lists the key marine representative illustrated in the chapter (usually to genus or family level). This section also provides information on the taxonomic authorities responsible for the classification adopted, recent changes which might have occurred, and lists relevant taxonomic sources.

Marine ornamental decapods are among the most popular invertebrates traded in the global marine aquarium industry. With the exception of the Dendrobranchiata, nearly all other major groups of decapods have at least one species traded as ornamental, the majority being caridean and stenopodidean shrimp, as well as hermit and brachyuran crabs. Found and collected in the wild from tropical coral reefs and coastal lagoons, the aquaculture of marine ornamental decapods is yet to achieve a scale that alleviates the fishing pressure affecting natural populations. Most cultivation efforts have targeted cleaner and boxing shrimp within the genera Lysmata and Stenopus, respectively. While these species are some of the most highly traded, research on their captive culture has been mainly driven by their market value rather than conservation purposes. This is likely the reason why the aquaculture of other species that are also heavily collected, such as hermit and brachyuran crabs, is yet to properly be addressed. This chapter provides an overview of the most emblematic marine ornamental decapod species currently traded for marine aquaria, including their distinctive features, as well as their collection, packing, and shipping techniques. The state of the art of marine ornamental decapod aquaculture is critically revised, with an emphasis on broodstock husbandry and maturation, larviculture, and grow-out to commercial size. Commonly employed systems for stocking breeding pairs, raising larvae, or growing juveniles are detailed, underscoring recirculated systems operating with synthetic seawater due to their potential use in coastal or inland facilities. The main bottlenecks impairing the successful breeding of these organisms are critically addressed, namely the lack of maturation diets customized to secure the nutritional needs of target species, which consequently impairs the production of high-quality larvae for cultivation. The main constraints for larviculture are also highlighted, with special emphasis on the lack of suitable live prey and the ability of several decapod species to delay metamorphosis under suboptimal larval diets. Issues on grow-out, such as poor growth performances and cannibalism, are discussed from a commercial perspective, as well as mitigation actions (e.g., use of live prey and complex shelters). There is a strong need for science-based conservation policies, where accurate data reporting and traceability along the supply chain must be implemented to promote a sustainable use of these resources. Though pricey and popular, marine ornamental decapods are no longer poorly studied when compared to a few years ago. Nonetheless, some key issues still need the attention of researchers, commercial breeders and hobbyists to ensure that these remarkable organisms can continue to be admired in the wild and in aquarium displays.

As the cause of dead zones became understood, research was devoted to figuring out the impact of hypoxia on aquatic life. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone overlaps with the Fertile Fisheries Crescent that stretches from Alabama to Texas, home to a multibillion dollar seafood industry. The chapter argues that the effect of hypoxic waters on benthic invertebrates is clear, while the story for mobile species like fish is complicated. Sessile invertebrates on the bottom, food for many fish and other animals, are wiped out when dissolved oxygen disappears. This chapter explains that even when mobile organisms are able to swim away to oxygen-rich waters, they are concentrated into a smaller habitat where they are more easily caught by predators and fishers. In the Gulf, the effects of hypoxia on fisheries are difficult to separate from the response of the fishing industry and overfishing, but effects especially on shrimp fisheries have been documented. As the chapter summarizes, hypoxia has many other impacts on aquatic biota, including rearranging food webs and contributing to the rise of jellyfish in coastal waters. Even when fishing yields are not affected, dead zones can devastate aquatic life and habitats.