Description of three ecology studies on brown shrimp Penaeus aztecus and white shrimp P. setiferus conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, Galveston, Texas.
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Responsibilities during the three-month long internship in the National Marine Fisheries Service at Galveston, Texas, consisted of working in three major projects concerning the ecology of brown shrimp Penaeus aztecus and white shrimp P. setiferus. The first project was a study on the comparative abundance of brown shrimp in vegetated and non-vegetated habitats of Louisiana salt marshes. Brown shrimp showed a marked preference towards vegetated habitats over non-vegetated ones. The second project refers to the burrowing behavior of brown and white shrimp under different conditions of water turbidity, shrimp size, shrimp density, and food availability. Changes in the burrowing behavior of brown shrimp were more evident than those of white shrimp, for both water turbidity and food availability tests. Shrimp size and density tests did not seem to affect the burrowing behavior of white shrimp. The last project studied the level of brown and white shrimp predation by estuarine fishes in the Galveston Pass, for a 5-week period from July 11 to August 22, 1984. Data obtained resulted in a very low percentage of predation, based on studies of the stomach contents of the fish collected during that period.