Northern shrimp

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Onglets

Description

Distinguishing features

The northern shrimp moves around quite gracefully using only 6 of its 10 walking legs (pereiopods). It moves in an extremely delicate manner, with just the tips of its legs touching the bottom, giving the impression of lightly skimming the substrate.

Its translucent body is orangey pink in colour, with the whitish internal organs of the thorax showing through, along with an area of bright pink on the back (the heart).

The walking legs fold under the body when the northern shrimp is swimming, using its pleopods (abdominal legs).

Reproduction

Northern shrimp are a protandric hermaphrodite species, meaning that they are first male (for 2 or 3 years), then become female (around the age of 4 or 5). The females are always larger than the males, since northern shrimp continue to grow throughout their lives.

The female lays her eggs (about 1,700 eggs) in the fall and carries them under her abdomen throughout the winter (for 7 to 8 months). The eggs hatch in the spring (April or May). The larvae spend 3 to 4 months feeding on plankton before they settle on the muddy bottom and begin to live like adult shrimp. Very few larvae survive the time they spend among plankton.

Diet

By day, northern shrimp feed on worms and crustaceans in the sediment on the sea bottom, as well as various forms of detritus that have ended up in this habitat.

By night, northern shrimp live quite a different life, as they migrate vertically to the surface to feed on plankton. Planktonic crustaceans (copepods and krill) are their favourite prey.

Predators

Adult shrimp are preyed upon in large number by cod, hake, redfish, Greenland halibut and flounder.

Commercially, northern shrimp are by far the most numerous of the 30 species of shrimp found in Atlantic Canadian waters. In 2007, they accounted for 97% of the 186,000 tonnes of shrimp harvested in that area.

Habitat

These are cold-water shrimp (-1.5°C to 6°C) found in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific, where they live on the muddy bottom (150 to 600 m deep).

Northern shrimp are found in Canadian waters (the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans), as well as in Oregon, Alaska, the Bering Sea, Hokkaido (northern Japan), Korea, New England, Greenland, Iceland, the North Sea, Svalbard and Norway.

By night, northern shrimp migrate vertically to the surface to feed on plankton. It is mainly males and the youngest females who participate in this migration.

Ecology, behaviour

Northern shrimp are harvested by bottom trawling – large bag-shaped nets towed near or on the seabed. This type of trawling has been criticized for disrupting seabed habitats and as the possible cause of the loss of marine biodiversity and the declining productivity of marine ecosystems. Bottom-trawl fishing has been banned on an experimental basis in some marine areas of the North Atlantic.

French name

Crevette nordique

Scientific name

Pandalus borealis

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Crustacea

Order

Decapoda

Family

Pandalidés

Size

Average: 8 cm Maximum: 15-16 cm

Life span

Up to 8 years

Status

Non-endangered species

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