Shrimp Fever

Shrimp fever hit Ecuador in the 1980s. In less than a decade shrimp farming became the second largest export business in the country (after oil). Thousands of kilometres of tidal mangrove forest, the breeding ground for much of the fish and the shellfish of the Pacific Ocean, were grubbed up and burned to make way for commercial fish farms. Running in a fringe down the the coasts of tropical countries like Ecuador, this film makes clear that mangroves are vital to the preservation of the coastline and the ecological balance of the region. But - as this prize-winning film makes clear - unscrupulous investors, greedy for the massive profits shrimp farms promised, risked destroying the very ecosystem that gave birth to the shrimp gold rush. (1991)