Prawn farming a burgeoning NC business

CEDAR GROVE, N.C. - Erika Harris thought she'd never see the day her parents would be selling seafood - freshwater prawns - under a tent in front of their Piedmont home in northern Orange County.

"This is all new," said Harris, standing near a baby pool filled with baskets of the chilled translucent-looking crustaceans with peach tails and bright blue claws.

"This is not the farm I remember. We'd have dirty tobacco-gummy hands," said Harris, who had driven from Fayetteville with three orders to fill for her mother, Geraldine Thompson. "Prawn, shrimp, seafood - not where I expected for this to go."

Thompson and her husband, Joe Thompson, operate one of six new prawn farms in North Carolina this year.

The Malaysian prawns, closer cousins to lobster than shrimp, are a tropical crustacean that can be raised in N.C. ponds from June to late September, when they've grown to about 9 inches long.

Source: Myrtle Beach Sun News