It’s a battle to be first for brine shrimpers on the Great Salt Lake

It was a cold morning on the Great Salt Lake. Gulls and eared grebes skirted the greenish waters beneath a gray sky at Carrington Bay as the brine shrimp boats set to their trade. One crew had already deployed a smaller inflatable boat, which was pulling in a containment boom to collect brine shrimp eggs from the lake’s surface. Other boats had sacks on board bulging with eggs, plus floatsam gathered in the process.

It’s a scene repeated daily from October to January as shrimpers go after the Great Salt Lake’s famous tiny crustaceans. Still, the multi-million dollar industry remains a mystery to most Utahns.

Harvesting of brine shrimp has been going on since the early 1950s, according to Don Leonard, president of the Utah Artemia Association, a trade association for brine shrimpers. Back then, live shrimp were being harvested to sell to fish hobbyists for use as feed in aquariums.

“About 10 years later, they realized the eggs could be handled in such a way they could be preserved and hatched out, so since then the harvest has been of brine shrimp eggs,” he said.

The industry didn’t really take off, however, until the early 1980s.

“The world’s fisheries started producing less and less fish while the world’s population was eating more and more fish, so they had to figure out how to raise fish in captivity,” Leonard said. “Now we harvest and process brine shrimp eggs and sell them to fish hatcheries, which hatch them out and feed them to baby shrimp and fish.”

Brine shrimp eggs are used in 55 countries around the world, with about 70 percent going to Asia, 15 percent to Europe, and 15 percent to Central and South America. Leonard estimated 65 to 70 percent of the eggs are consumed by shrimp and the other 30 percent are consumed by fish.

“After the eggs have been processed, you can put tens of thousands in your hand,” Leonard said. “They’re very small and that’s the unique niche. Certain kinds of fish like to eat live food, and when these fish or shrimp are babies they can’t eat anything very big. Our product is baby food for baby fish and shrimp.”

With the depletion of many wild ocean fisheries, aquaculture has become a multi-billion dollar global industry, exponentially increasing the demand for brine shrimp. That can lead to stiff competition — both to land one of the 79 permits issued to shrimpers by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources each year, and to beat other licensed shrimpers to eggs once the winter harvest season starts. The DWR is charged with monitoring, researching and protecting brine shrimp on the Great Salt Lake.

Last week, DWR Conservation Officer for Weber County David Beveridge and Chris Haramoto, assistant park manager of Antelope Island State Park, were patrolling west of Hat Island, checking boats for proper paperwork and vessel safety. They left from the Great Salt Lake Marina with Dave Shearer, Great Salt Lake Marina Harbormaster. Shearer drove the boat with his Australian shepherd, Taz, riding in one of the bucket seats.

The men took turns looking through binoculars, searching for boats to approach.

“There’s a boat and they’re harvesting,” Shearer said.

As he maneuvered toward the vessel, he was careful to avoid disturbing a slick of brine shrimp eggs on the water. The boat’s boom — a floating containment apparatus that projects a foot or two down into the water — was tightening a slick it had encircled. When the noose was tight enough, the eggs would be pumped into sacks on the boat. Those sacks would later be offloaded to another boat. The boats can be directed to certain areas by aerial scouts.

“What they’ll do to harvest is send a plane up — a spotter plane — and when you look from the air there’ll be a streak of red and they’ll dispatch boats,” Beveridge said.

Brine shrimp compliance is just a small part of Beveridge’s job. He goes out on patrols like this two or three times each harvest season. While on patrol, part of his job is to ensure that shrimpers have their Certificate of Registration [permit]. Shrimpers must display their COR marker while harvesting, which gives them a 300-yard-radius distance from other harvesters.

Haramoto does vessel inspections to make sure safety items like fire extinguishers, a horn, whistle or bell, and navigation lights, are on board.

Marty Chevalier was the first shrimper the patrol came upon that morning in the south part of the lake, but he wasn’t harvesting at the time.

“We’re waiting for orders,” he said. “There’s been big streaks of eggs and shrimp on this area, it’s just at this particular time the eggs have dropped. They’ll surface eventually.”

Chevalier is from the San Juan Islands in Washington State and has been harvesting brine shrimp eggs on the Great Salt Lake for 10 years. He fishes in Alaska in the spring and summer, and in Puget Sound in the fall.

“We start at daylight every morning, have our pilots fly to do a survey of the lake, and they put us on the eggs in the lake,” he said. “We stay all day long until dark, watching whether we get set on something or not.”

Shrimpers acknowledge the fierce competition among themselves.

“There are always problems with other companies,” Chevalier said. “We’re all trying for the same eggs. We try to be on point, waiting for something to pop up.”

Like Chevalier, many of the brine shrimpers are out-of-state fisherman who harvest on the Great Salt Lake seasonally.

“I think they like it,” Beveridge said. “It’s peaceful out here.”

Thane Hall, who lives in Kamas, said probably 75 percent of brine shrimpers are Alaska fishermen who come down for work during the harvest season. Hall has been harvesting here since 1995. He said crewmen typically don’t go to shore unless they need food or supplies. Most the time they can get food and fuel from tenders — boats that distribute supplies.

Shayan Rohani, originally from Seattle, spends half his time in Salt Lake and the other half in Portland. As a mountain guide, the brine shrimp harvest season works well with his climbing season. He reads books and watches DVDs to pass long waits. On the lake, he said, you need a good heater to cope with the cold and a good GPS to cope with the fog.

“It’s best to have teams that get along with each other too,” he said. “We have a good time out here.”

While the industry is still competitive, it’s not as cutthroat as in years past.

“It’s competitive but not nearly as much because the competition was so intense it became too costly, and so the industry has formed a cooperative where they harvest and process together,” said Leonard. “Foreign sources became more prominent and were less expensive. In order to compete we had to reduce our costs.”

Brine shrimp of different species are found in salty waters all over the world, according to John Luft, Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program manager, who added the Great Salt Lake supplies roughly 75 to 85 percent of the brine shrimp egg demand around the world.

The co-op, called the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp Cooperative, was formed in 2006. It holds about 85 percent of the permits, which now cost $14,000 per year.

Companies must pay royalties to the state as well, based on per pound of raw harvest. Before the co-op, competition was extreme, with 32 companies competing on the lake at one time.

“All those companies were vying for the same streak of eggs, or the biggest one out there,” Luft said. “There were incidents where there were some boats ramming, people waving guns and threatening — almost like pirates out on the high seas. When there was money that was at stake there then it was a pretty big deal. But they’ve kind of consolidated and there are essentially only two companies out there now.”

Beveridge said, “For the most part they’re reissued permits to the same companies that reapply every year. They never give them up. They’re too valuable.”

Leonard said it’s hard to tell how the harvest has been so far this season.

“Because the season isn’t over, it’s hard to compare year to year because different years are different,” he said. “Some years there’s more harvest on the lake, some it’s more on the shore. Some years almost all the harvest is in October and November, some years it’s over the whole season. So far it’s been a good year, but we haven’t begun processing so we don’t know the quality of the product.”

He added the last three years have been above average, in terms of raw harvest — what’s taken out of the lake and reported to the state including biomass, debris, water — totals, but below average in terms of finished product — dried eggs to sell to customers.

“The finished yield is a fraction of the raw harvest that we report,” Leonard said.

As of Dec. 21, cumulative harvest poundage totals are 18.6 million pounds — 10.2 million from the lake; 7.5 million from the shore; and 864,260 from salt ponds, according to data from the DWR’s Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program.

The 2007-08 harvest totaled 14.8 million total pounds of raw biomass, which includes eggs, brine shrimp, empty shells, algae and other materials. In the 2008-09 season that number was 19.6 million pounds.

According to the Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program, the industry is valued at $10 million to $60 million, depending on the quantity and quality of the annual harvest.

“We’re only allowed to harvest the excess eggs,” Leonard said. “The DWR makes sure the lake at the end of the harvest season has enough eggs to repopulate the lake.”

Luft said the minimum of 21 eggs per liter of water is also there to make sure enough food remains for shorebirds who eat the brine shrimp.

Sampling takes place during the season to ensure the number of eggs in the lake stays above that number.

“Even though our season technically runs four months, we’ve had seasons only four or five weeks long,” Leonard said. “This year, the sampling indicates we’ll probably not have our season shut down prematurely — but you never know.”

Leonard said he thinks there are two principal draws for people to be involved in this industry.

“I think some people do it because they like the outdoors, they love nature,” he said. “There are some people who are professional fisherman and fish the fisheries so they come down here during the winter.”

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com