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Anna Marie Seafood Summary
Dulac, Louisiana, US: Anna Marie Seafood www.annamarieseafood.com
While many American shrimpers have been shuttered by global competition, rising costs, diminished catches, and hurricanes (Katrina alone wiped out more than half Louisiana’s shrimp fleet), Lance Nacio, a 38-year-old Cajun and wild shrimp fisherman from Terrebone Bay, Louisiana is going gangbusters. His product is in Whole Foods, Williams-Sonoma, even high-end East Coast restaurants and hotels.
Shrimp are Americans’ favorite seafood, but 90% is supplied from mechanized ponds in Thailand, China, Ecuador, and Vietnam. U.S. shrimpers, most based in Louisiana, have found it difficult to compete on price. But Lance competes on taste. Imported, farmed shrimp simply doesn’t have same great seafood flavor, salty richness of wild shrimp.
His environmental report card also beats out the international competitions. Recent news reports have raised serious concerns about Asian shrimp farms, which often use antibiotics and have high levels of disease. Lance’s shrimp are all wild—and his modified nets reduce by 60-70% the bycatch of manta rays, catfish, and crabs. If a giant turtle is accidentally caught in the net, he administers CPR.
He didn’t always approach shrimping this way. In the beginning, he says, “it was a boom. Dockside prices were tremendous. I tried to earn through volume. Gas was 60 cents per gallon and shrimp fetched $1/lb. Now, shrimp gets $0.60-70 cents per lb, fuel costs 4 times as much. I had to figure out how to get more money, so I found ways of targeting bigger shrimp.”
That meant white shrimp, which he thinks other fishers can learn from. “Don’t worry about filling up boat, but target the species that can bring the most dollar value.”
Lance was lucky. The Anna Marie survived Hurricane Katrina. And at about the same time he was discovered by area non-profit Market Umbrella, whose White Boot Brigade program helps local shrimpers with direct marketing. (The name comes from the common sight of shrimpers selling their fresh catch boatside without taking off their white boots.) Lance quickly became the WBB’s poster child—a model shrimper paying attention to changes in the marketplace.
Soon Lance was selling to Whole Foods and has secured contracts with restaurants around the country, including a $10,000-per-year account with high-end hotels in Washington, DC. Prominent placement in the Williams Sonoma catalogue catapulted him to national attention.
Although he’s been embraced by the Slow Food movement, he says his success is due to technology—especially the freezer on board his boat. The improvement in taste, compared to the typical dockside freezing, is staggering. And the flash freezing preserves shrimp’s kaleidoscopic colors, too. “It’s tremendous how good they look when they’re thawed back,” he says proudly.
