History of the Mexican Shrimp Industry

Mexico’s Pacific Shrimp fishery was a food source for natives along Mexico’s west coast for hundreds of years, trapped or netted by Chinese for at last half a century, and first “discovered” by Americans and Japanese in the early ‘20’s.

In the 1930’s, the fishery was transformed to an industrial basis with key investment from both American and Japanese firms. However, Mexican law established that fishing could only be done by cooperativas forcing Americans from the market. The Japanese secured a 4 year concession to fish shrimp gaining control of the entire west coast fishery. In 1940, former President, General Rodriguez convinced President Cardenas that the Japanese presence was a military threat and offered to finance development of the industry. The Japanese lost their concession and General Rodriguez went into action developing freezer plants and distribution of Mexican shrimp in the U.S. under the Ocean Garden brand.

Large scale shrimp aquaculture started in Mexico during the late 80’s and grew through the 90’s with practically no production before 1988 to 110,000 MT/yr (whole animals) produced in 2006. While the wild harvest has remained stable around 60,000 MT/yr, aquaculture passed wild harvest in 2003 and is now almost double in tonnage with production growing an average of 16% per year.