Moorea - A Visit To The Shrimp Farm

Sylvia

Opunohu Bay, Moorea

Eat me!!

We are in Moorea, Tahiti's neighbor to the east. We are currently anchored in a large bay called Opunohu, on the north side of the island. It is the quintessential South Pacific anchorage, with the reef and open ocean on one side of us and green, verdant peaks on the other. Moorea is a popular tourist destination and there are many things to do here.

We heard there was a shrimp farm at the end of Opunohu bay and that they sold fresh shrimp there on Wednesdays. I was keen to take advantage of this opportunity so on Wednesday morning, while Tom was up to his ears replacing the bearings in our two fresh water pumps, I hopped into our dinghy "QUICKIE" to see if I could find the farm. Kate from PANGAEA accompanied me.

We are anchored at the mouth of the bay, so it was a bit of a ride to reach our destination at the far end. As we approached the end of the bay we could see quite a bit of activity across the street from the beach, which we surmised was the shrimp farm. We beached QUICKIE, tied it to a tree to secure it, and made our way over to the action.

Kate at the shrimp farm. Belvedere peak in the background. (We didn't want to leave the oars in the dinghy.)

We entered a warehouse-type building and a friendly lady told us to go out to the lagoons where they were gathering our shrimp. Cool! We joined a number of other people, mostly locals but with a few cruisers like ourselves in the mix, and watched two men pull in a large net which was stretched across the square lagoon. 

The net stretched across the lagoon

They slowly pulled it the length of the lagoon and then, when they reached the end, started gathering the ends to contain all the shrimp, which were hopping around trying to escape the net. Meanwhile, a flock of terns was wheeling overhead trying to take advantage of the frenzy of leaping shrimps. It was quite a scene.

The warehouse lady helped the men pull in the net. Note terns dive-bombing the operation.

When the net was gathered into a corner they used dip nets to collect the shrimp into large buckets which they wheeled into the warehouse where they would weigh and bag the shrimp.

Scooping the shrimps into bags...

...and weighing them out into kilos.

Packing the kilo bags with ice.

Kate and I stood in line, purchased our kilo bags and made our way back to the dinghy on the beach. As we dinghied back to our boats we were treated to the company of a dolphin who decided to amuse itself by playing in our bow wake.

As soon as I was on Cinnabar I set a pot of water on the stove and got it boiling. I boiled the shrimps for 3 minutes (as instructed by the people at the farm).

Once the shrimp had cooled it took me about 1.5 hours to peel and clean all the shrimp, 40 in all. It was now past lunchtime and Tom was eyeballing those plump little shrimp, so I whipped up a cocktail sauce and we indulged in some shrimps and fresh baguette for a late lunch. 

That night I sauteed the rest of the shrimp with lots of garlic and tarragon, scampi-style, and served it up with roasted garlic spread on toast points. Yum!!!

Pile 'O Shrimp