300654 Tue Aug 02 17:30:59 -0700 2005 19 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1672199 There was the start of a discussion on the SF board, and I found this great link that defines the difference. I always wondered. Love that Wikipedia. It's free but one of the few places on the web besides this one I would pay for. There are even various language versions including Polish. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prawn Tue Aug 02 17:30:59 -0700 2005 0 rworange 1 1672202 Oh, now I get it: "Prawns are edible, shrimp-like crustaceans, belonging to the sub-order Dendrobranchiata. They are distinguished from the superficially similar shrimp by the gill structure which is branching in prawns (hence the name, dendro="tree"; branchia="gill"), but is lamellar in shrimp. The sister taxon to Dendrobranchiata is Pleocyemata, which contains all the true shrimp, crabs, lobsters, etc." Thanks. Now I'll never confuse the two. Link: http://eatingchinese.org Tue Aug 02 17:51:26 -0700 2005 1672199 0 Gary Soup 2 1672203 You are very welcome Gary. Glad I can clear that up for you. Be sure to examine the gill structure before chowing down. Click on the related prawn farming article to also learn about the sex life of a prawn. True food porn. Tue Aug 02 18:06:29 -0700 2005 1672202 0 rworange 3 1672204 oops. forgot the link. Sorry I read it. Now I need to worried about farmed shrimp as well as farmed salmon. Sheesh. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimp_farming Tue Aug 02 18:12:20 -0700 2005 1672203 0 rworange 4 1672233 So are prawns wild? Does their production have a more benign environmental impact than shrimp farming? I haven't ordered shrimp in eons, despite my love of it, because of what's described below. Yerks! Erosion! Poison! Destruction of mangroves. Gawdawful. From the Wikipedia link listed above: Shrimp farms of all types, from extensive to super-intensive, can cause severe ecological problems wherever they are located. For extensive farms, huge areas of mangroves were cleared, reducing biodiversity. During the 1980s and 1990s, about 35% of the world's mangrove forests have vanished. Shrimp farming was a major cause of this, accounting for over a third of it.[VBY02] Mangroves, through their roots, help stabilize a coastline and capture sediments; their removal has led to a marked increase of erosion and less protection against floods. Mangrove estuaries are also especially rich and productive ecosystems and provide the spawning grounds for many species of fish, including many commercially important ones.[ISA00] Intensive farms, while reducing the direct impact on the mangroves, have other problems. Their nutrient-rich effluents (industrial shrimp feeds disintegrate quickly, only 30% are actually eaten by the shrimps, the rest is wasted[Ros04c]) are typically discharged into the environment, seriously upsetting the ecological balance. These waste waters contain significant amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides (used to disinfect ponds between uses), and antibiotics that cause severe pollution of the environment. Furthermore, releasing antibiotics in such ways injects them into the food chain and increases the risks of organisms becoming resistant against them.[Owen04] Prolonged use of a pond leads to an incremental build-up of a toxic sludge at the pond's bottom from waste products and excrements.[NACA03] Flushing a pond never completely removes this sludge, and eventually, the pond is abandoned, leaving behind a wasteland with the soil made unusable for any other purposes due to the high levels of salinity, acidity, and toxic chemicals. A typical pond in an extensive farm can be used only a few years. An Indian study estimated the time to rehabilitate such lands to about 30 years. Thailand has banned inland shrimp farms since 1998 because they caused too much destruction of agricultural lands due to salination.[ISA00] A Thai study estimated that 60% of the shrimp farming area in Thailand was abandoned in the years 1989 – 1996.[HL01] Wed Aug 03 17:28:56 -0700 2005 1672204 0 missliss 5 1672258 You know, until I read this I thought the only thing to consider about prawns was cholesterol. I never even dreamed that shrimp and prawns were farmed. Yes, there are wild prawns. I did a goggle search because I have never noticed something like the term 'day boat' or whatever on a menu or at a fish store. Well, it turns out a few menus do list wild scallops on the menu. However, as this link says, wild prawns are just as bad for the environment as farmed prawns. Turns out the trawlers are decimating fish populations with their nets. More info and prawn farm picture below. http://www.ejfoundation.org/index.php?name=PagEd&page_id=24 I guess I'm surprised that there is not the attention to shrimp/prawns as other fish. They even have prawn feed. I hope some day I don't hear about mad shrimp disease. However. prawns seem to be caniblistic anyway. Wikipedia's opinion is that prawn farming doesn't carry as many of the problems as shrimp farming except disease. Part of the reason, it seems to me, is those prawns are nasty little critters. If it gets too crowded they eat each other. Also the older male prawns tend to eat the younger males to eliminate competition for females. I'm telling you that whole prawn sex life is a regular soap opera. Wikipedia says that after mating the male prawn protects the female until her shell hardens. Is'nt that just like a guy, hook up with a tender young thing and then when she gets older and her shell hardens ... prawn divorce. Will, if you are reading this, the 'prawnography' comment really made me laugh. One can, in a sense, say all prawns are wild. It says a female will mate with any passing male. Males go through three stages, the first being called a 'small male'. If that isn't bad enough the old 'Blue Claw' males will eat you alive at that stage. Yeah, being a BC is where it is at when the chelipeds may become twice as long as their body. I think I will pass on the prawns in restaurants for a while. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshwater_prawn_farm Wed Aug 03 23:41:37 -0700 2005 1672233 0 rworange 6 1672262 You do know that anyone can edit anything on Wikipedia, right? There are dayboat signs in fishmarkets in the bay area or they will tell you that something came from a dayboat. I ask but I have seen it in print. Thu Aug 04 01:49:29 -0700 2005 1672258 0 wally 7 1672264 Dayboat prawns or shrimp? A goggle search shows nothing. I know I made a typo and put scallops once in the above post by mistake ... the word day boat goes with scallops. What I was trying to say is there is no corresponding term for shrimp or prawns to indicate their origin. It turns out the word 'wild' doesn't mean too much. While it is fine to point out that anyone can edit the information, that statement neither proves or disproves the information. Googling around, even the shrimp industry acknowledges the problems, although they put a spin on it. The Monterey Aquarium in California has a seafood watch. They advise against eating imported shrimp whether wild or farm raised. The recommendation is to eat trap-caught US shrimp. I never knew there were shrimp farms. That is a fact. These farms use antiboitics. The impact on the environment is well documented. If you have information to the contrary, I'd actually be relieved to read it. My only point was that I wonder why this issue isn't covered in the news like so many other types of seafood. Also, as this article on sustainable shrimp farming states, there are no labelling or regulating organizations currently. So, we really don't know how the shrimp we are eating was produced. Sustainable shrimp farming http://www.evp.slu.se/trop_ecology/LovisaB_proj.htm Link: http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_factsheet.aspx?fid=23 Thu Aug 04 03:25:28 -0700 2005 1672262 0 rworange 8 1672297 I don't buy shrimp very often. When I do I buy shrimp,it is from the coast of North Carolina and Georgia which are supposedly well managed fisheries. I also when I can get them will buy spot shrimp that are trapped on the Pacific Coast. These are not cheap shrimp. Dayboats are for scallops although shrimp are caught using a similar trawl. There is a fair amount of scientific literature within the past 30 years over problems with aquaculture, particularly shrimp. Nonsustainability is a major problem with shrimp aquaculture. In a lot of ways the whole field is still experimental. I admit I haven't read much published since the mid 1990s but I doubt that things have improved much. This sort of science doesn't get covered in the news very much. It is not "sexy" science so it isn't news. Thu Aug 04 18:40:38 -0700 2005 1672264 0 wally 9 1672304 Thanks Wally, it gives me a few more things to look for. I'm not a fanantic about food in terms of being ecologically correct, but I do try to make selections based on the better environmental choice. I love, but dont' eat fois gras, so when a retaurant sent me out some fois gras, gratis, I enjoyed it without making a big deal out of it. The server remembered after the fact that I don't eat this usually. So it gives me some other things to look for when buying or ordering shrimp/prawns. Also questions to ask when I'm ordering in restaurants. Looking over the Chez Panisse menu, even Alice Waters doesn't identify the shrimp source, although I would guess that she would be buying from a responsible source. Still, it would be nice to put on the menu to raise cosumer awareness. Thu Aug 04 22:37:38 -0700 2005 1672297 0 rworange 10 1672305 The place I buy fish and shellfish from is Monterey Fish on Hopkins in Berkeley. It is not a bargain basement. They do have a website. They do supply a lot of restaurants. They also put out fliers about a lot of their fish and will answer any questions. Link: http://www.webseafood.com/ Fri Aug 05 01:14:27 -0700 2005 1672304 0 wally 3 1672207 Aha - prawnography! Tue Aug 02 19:56:45 -0700 2005 1672203 0 Will Owen 2 1672205 Here is from the Food for Dummies book (not yet on your Amazon page): Prawn - Big Shrimp - well, small. That's why they call them "shrimp". You are welcome. Tue Aug 02 19:38:15 -0700 2005 1672202 0 Peter 3 1672211 Which is why I never order "jumbo shrimps." ed Wed Aug 03 00:03:16 -0700 2005 1672205 0 e.d. 2 1672208 I thought that it was interesting. But I'm more of a science type anyhow. "Superficially similar" isn't really all that similar. The names of the chocolate "truffle" and the truffle are superficially similar as well. Now I can regale my guests with this knowledge. Tue Aug 02 20:19:02 -0700 2005 1672202 0 rudeboy 1 1672215 I've always thought the term prawn meant a fresh water shrimp. But more often than not, in restaurants its seems prawns mean very large shrimps. Wed Aug 03 09:25:20 -0700 2005 1672199 0 Evan 1 1672218 With all due respect to the usually [reasonably] authoritative Wikipedia, both Dendrobranchiata and Pleocyemata include crustaceans that are commonly referred to, by both lay persons and marine scientists, as shrimp. (as, for example, in the case of family Penaeidae, which is in the suborder Dendrobranchiata). My sense it that the terms shrimp and prawn are used pretty interchangeably and if they have any difference these days it's that a prawn is (often, but not always) a freshwater shrimp and/or (often, but not always) a large shrimp (as an earlier poster suggested). Wed Aug 03 10:56:15 -0700 2005 1672199 0 FlyFish 1 1672223 you call 'em prawns when you want to charge more. Wed Aug 03 12:57:55 -0700 2005 1672199 0 mark 1 1672226 Most of the shrimp I've seen look like crayfish without the claws. When we were in Hong Kong, at a fishing/seafood restaurant village across from the old airport, the critters labeled as prawns in the live tanks looked more like animated lobster tails without the lobster attached, if you can imagine that...and to my great delight that's pretty much how they tasted cooked! Wed Aug 03 13:47:43 -0700 2005 1672199 0 Will Owen 1 1672834 Your question made me think of the "Simpsons" episode where Bart is distributing flyers for a Chinese restaurant owner (so his daughters can go to an ivy-league, rather than a state, school). The man tells lazy Bart, "Be brave like prawn, not cowardly, like shrimp!" Wed Aug 17 14:18:27 -0700 2005 1672199 0 Niki