Over the last two decades, the percentage of the world’s shrimp supply coming from wild-caught fisheries has gradually taken up a smaller piece of the pie.
The most recent statistics on wild-caught shrimp place it at 29 percent of the world’s total supply of shrimp, and of that, one-third of global catch is taken up by China, with India’s production also rapidly growing. According to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which shared the info during the Wild-Caught Shrimp Summit it hosts alongside the Global Shrimp Forum in Utrecht, Netherlands, more and more of those fisheries are beginning to take up MSC certification.
MSC Program Development Director Camiel Derichs said the program has been seeing increasing engagement in South America, and the Argentine red shrimp fishery attaining certification resulted in a big increase in total volume of certified wild-caught shrimp making it to the market.
However, the fisheries are not without their challenges, Derichs said.
“Many of these fisheries operate bottom-trawl gear, affecting habitats, and usually are conducted with small mesh sizes and therefore have bycatch,” he said.
Overfishing has been identified in multiple wild caught shrimp fisheries by organizations like the FAO and the WWF, and according to Derichs, 76.6 percent of all wild shrimp catch by volume does not fall under MSC certification.
“Many of these fisheries are data deficient,” he said.
Many of the large shrimp fisheries don’t have sufficient data to ensure a sustainable catch rate, and Derichs said the issue is being compounded by the many environmental challenges facing stocks.
“The complex of climate change weighing on fish stock and shrimp stock distribution, food availability, acidification, warming water having impact on reproductive health – it’s critical we manage shrimp stocks for the future so that there’s more resilience in these stocks and more productivity for the communities that depend on them,” Derichs said.
The challenges to wild-caught shrimp fisheries are more than just environmental. Iberconsa Corporate Commercial Director Fernando Lago said the Argentine red shrimp fishery also faces logistical challenges due to its seasonality and the complications of labor, such as a strike in 2025 that caused catch rates to plummet.
“If you look just at the data, you can get really confused,” Lago said.
The quotas available are not always a good indicator of how much shrimp the fishery will catch, as those labor issues or “non-fishery” problems can influence fishery trends and show up in the data.
“Sometimes you have to deal with local issues,” Lago said.
In 2026, part of the problem is catching shrimp too rapidly, with two record-breaking months in a row and a fishing season that is poised to close weeks early, he said. Prices were initially extremely high in the fishery due to the troubled 2025 season, but the massive volumes naturally drove down prices.
“This year is very interesting, because we’ve never seen a year like this before,” Lago said.
Importers are now wary of Argentine red shrimp, according to Lago, as many of them have lost money in the past due to the ups and downs of the fishery.
Despite all the issues, Argentine red shrimp has managed to cultivate a high level of recognition in the market and is beginning to make inroads globally, Lago said. His company is poised to debut a new head-on, shell-on, MSC-certified product in China’s largest retailer, and the species continues to develop brand recognition.
Another well-known shrimp fishery, the U.S. Gulf shrimp fishery, is also facing its share of problems outside the sustainability of the stock – though the solutions to those problems are unclear.
“This is a great product; the domestic Gulf shrimp is a great product. Wherever you come from in this business, I would suspect on this panel we’d have agreement that a wild product generically is more attractive to the consumer than a farmed product,” National Fisheries Institute (NFI) Executive Vice President for Government Affairs Robert Dehaan said.
DeHaan said many of NFI’s members want more of the product, and a more reliable source of it, but haven’t been able to find it.
“Our companies tell us on a regular basis that they cannot find the domestic wild-capture Gulf shrimp at all, cannot find it,” DeHaan said.
DeHaan said the Gulf fishery faces a number of challenges – inflated production costs due to its location in the U.S., the difficulty securing labor, and a lack of marketing of the product to the same degree of success that the Argentine red shrimp fishery has seen have all contributed to the issues.
“These are all problems that exist out there, and those problems will not be solved by a tariff,” DeHaan said.
He said it’s easier to point out the problems than to offer up new solutions, but reiterated that the Gulf fishery in the U.S. has a strong product that could make inroads if it followed the lead of other similar shrimp fisheries that have marketed their strengths.
“I think that it’s a great product, and there’s a willingness to pay more in the market,” DeHaan said.
