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Picture an all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet with mounds of pink crustaceans on ice. More likely than not, those piles of protein were fed in part by another type of "shrimp" native to Utah's Great Salt Lake. Approximately 90 percent of the shrimp eaten in the United States is farmed, and Americans consume more than four pounds of shrimp per person each year-more than any other seafood, including tuna and salmon.
A vital component of shrimp aquaculture is live feed, including brine shrimp harvested from the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Artemia franciscana, the species of brine shrimp found in the Great Salt Lake, is the foundation of a multimillion dollar industry that supports aquaculture around the globe. The annual harvest involves collecting brine shrimp eggs or cysts that ultimately hatch into live feed for shrimp farms.
Artemia are one of the few organisms able to live in the Great Salt Lake with a salinity level five times that of the ocean. The creatures resemble transparent, feathery bugs in the water and grow to less than half an inch. Optimal conditions allow adult females to live as long as three months and to produce as many as 300 tiny eggs. In a landlocked state more than 600 miles from the nearest ocean, a vast fleet of commercial fishermen compete for this creature's eggs.
Second only to the Great Lakes, the Great Salt Lake is the largest body of water lying within the United States. As a saltwater lake, however, it is vulnerable to many climate and other variables. Brine shrimp require a delicate ecosystem, and water levels in the Great Salt Lake are currently shrinking. Since 1847, the Great Salt Lake has steadily shrunk, reaching its lowest recorded level in 2016. Today, the lake is at least 3.6 meters below its 1847 level and perhaps half its original volume.
Previously, many researchers thought the primary reason for the receding waters in the Great Salt Lake (as with other saltwater lakes) was due to changes in wet and dry cycles related to climate change. Additional study, however, has suggested that the Great Salt Lake's water level decline largely stems from up-gradient water diversion related to regional population increases. Sarah Derouin, Utah's Great Salt Lake Has Lost Half Its...