Seafood Production
+ Access to Local Seafood

Finfish, shellfish, and bivalves are natural nutritious food sources that thrive in Georgia’s coastal marshes and estuaries. Georgia’s coastal communities can benefit from our healthy water quality and support our local economy by purchasing seafood that is caught locally.

Our research focused on the economic benefits of Georgia’s seafood industry compared with neighboring South Carolina’s. We compared sales data for domestic caught finfish and shellfish with sales of imported finfish and shellfish for each state.

What We Learned

Finding: South Carolina and Georgia fisherman benefit from similar coastlines and produce similar catches of fish.

• South Carolina has 2,876 miles of coastline (including shoreline and marsh), while Georgia has 2,344 miles.
• South Carolina’s waterfront supports 1,209 jobs and $71 million in sales of domestic-caught fish.
• Georgia’s waterfront supports 1,349 jobs and $69 million in sales of domestic-caught fish.

Finding: Overall total seafood demand in Georgia is much higher than in South Carolina. Considering the population of our state (10.5 million) is more than twice that of South Carolina, fishermen in Georgia are not keeping pace with statewide market demands for seafood. Imports are filling the gap.

Finding: Our state’s appetite for seafood presents an opportunity for local fisherman in Georgia to close the gap and reduce the amount of imported seafood coming into our state.

Future research will consider data that may indicate our coast’s carrying capacity for an expanded fishing industry.

Finding: Since 1979, there’s been a 560% decline in Georgia-Based shrimp trawlers.

A great number of factors influence the number of shrimp boats in Georgia – cost of fuel, fleet efficiency, regulations, to name a few. As such, it is difficult to determine what impact this decline will have on coastal fisheries and working waterfronts. We will continue to investigate to determine what this means for the coast and the State of Georgia.