The Current’s Justin Taylor spent a full day with the crew of the Big Cobb out of Darien to show us what shrimping looks like in Coastal Georgia. As foreign farm-raised shrimp floods the consumer market, it threatens local careers and culture.
On a cool November morning at the Thompson shrimp dock in Darien, the stillness is broken as Capt. Wynn Gale starts the engine of his boat, Big Cobb. While the engine warms up, Gale and his deckhand Aron Drake board the vessel and prepare to spend the day at sea. At 5 a.m., as on most calm mornings during shrimping season, Wynn orders the lines holding the boat to the dock to be thrown off and expertly maneuvers his 64-year-old shrimp boat away from its berth and heads east, down the Darien River.
As dawn breaks, the Big Cobb reaches Doboy Sound, just south of Sapelo Island. With the river wide enough to let the boat safely drift in the current, Gale takes the engine out of gear and walks to the back deck to prepare the boat for shrimping.
As Capt. Gale operates the winch, Drake assists in guiding the nets into place, making sure everything moves smoothly and nothing gets snagged or tangled.
Since the late 1940s, shrimp boats in Georgia have used a design called the Otter Trawl, an inventive way of dragging nets along the sandy ocean floor. The technique uses two large otter boards that resemble big wooden “doors”, with a long stainless steel chain stretched between them. This “tickler chain” drags along the sand, sending shrimp floating from the bottom and then collected by the net that follows closely behind.
A lifelong resident of Darien, 50 year old Captain Wynn Gale, has captained many boats since starting out in the shrimping business in 1985 at the age of 12.
Once the nets are in place and lowered to the bottom, Capt. Gale puts the engine in gear, steers his boat north, and slowly drags along the bare ocean floor about a mile off the coast of Sapelo in hopes of catching a bounty of Atlantic white shrimp.
Wild Atlantic white shrimp, the primary shrimp caught in Georgia waters, spawn every year from March to September. Each female white shrimp could release up to a million eggs into the ocean.
Once hatched, the shrimp larvae feed on plankton. After about 20 days they swim into Georgia’s salt marshes and sounds to feed on algae, smaller sea creatures, and other debris. After maturing for two to three months, the shrimp move into deeper water and return to the ocean.
While the boat slowly drags, 27-year-old Drake shares stories of his two children, the misadventures of his youth, and reminisces on the beauty of Sapelo Island while visiting his relatives in the Geechee community there.
After several hours, the nets are then hauled aboard and left hanging from the boat’s rigging, leaving the end of the net suspended above the deck, bulging with the contents picked up from the sea floor.
The net is then opened, and its contents spill onto the back deck of the boat.
After the nets are lowered back into the water to make another drag, the boat’s deckhand starts the process of culling shrimp, separating out any other sea life that was also scooped up.
Once the shrimp are picked out, they are tossed into baskets and put on ice.
The remaining catch is then tossed into the sea and quickly devoured by a long caravan of hungry seagulls, sharks, and dolphins.
Back at the dock, Drake and Gale unload the shrimp from the boat in large ice-filled coolers. They are then weighed and beheaded, at the customer’s request.
