Georgia shrimpers grapple with trade, disease and climate change

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WABE and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Shrimp are the quintessential Georgia seafood: the central ingredient of a lowcountry boil, the subject of an annual festival on Jekyll Island, ubiquitous on coastal menus. But often, it turns out, the shrimp on those menus isn’t from Georgia. Genetic testing on the shrimp at 44 Savannah restaurants recently revealed that 34 of them were actually serving foreign shrimp.

But labels on local menus are just the tip of the iceberg — or the crunchy tip of the shrimp tail — when it comes to current challenges for the shrimp industry.