On October 28, a new South Carolina law takes effect. It requires restaurants, food trucks and some retailers that serve imported ready-to-eat shrimp to say so in writing, on the menu and at the front door. The deadline falls in the middle of fall white-shrimp season. September and October bring the biggest catches of the year.
For anyone eating near Moss Creek, the signs have limits. The law tells you when a kitchen uses imported shrimp. It doesn't tell you when the shrimp came from local waters. And the one regional program built to certify local and American shrimp stops at Beaufort, Port Royal and the Sea Islands. On this end of the county, the clearest answer still comes from asking at the dock and the market counter.
The wording that goes up on October 28
The measure is H.4248, enacted as Act 254. It adds Section 39-25-175 to the South Carolina Code. The Governor signed it on June 30, 2026, and it takes effect 120 days later. It covers food-service businesses that sell ready-to-eat food, which includes restaurants, cafeterias, food stands and food trucks.
The law requires one of two sentences. The difference between them is a single word.
| What the kitchen serves | Required wording on menus and at the main entrance |
|---|---|
| Both domestic and imported shrimp | "Some items served at this establishment may contain foreign imported shrimp. Ask for more information." |
| Only imported shrimp | "Some items served at this establishment contain foreign imported shrimp. Ask for more information." |
| Only domestic shrimp | No disclosure required |
The South Carolina Department of Agriculture enforces the law. Its guidance says menu notices can go on as stickers or inserts at first, but they have to be legible and about the same size as other disclaimers. Entrance signs have to be visible to customers, and food trucks post theirs by the serving window. Inspectors check during unannounced routine visits and complaint investigations, and they can review supplier records to confirm where the shrimp came from. A first offense gets a warning and three days to fix it. After that, fines run $100 to $5,000 for each day the violation continues.
A door with no sign means domestic, not local
Under the statute, "domestic shrimp" means shrimp caught and landed in South Carolina or anywhere else in U.S. waters. A restaurant serving only Gulf shrimp from another state needs no sign, and neither does one serving shrimp landed that morning in Beaufort County. The law draws its line at the U.S. border. It doesn't draw one at the mouth of the Calibogue.
The law also stops at the cooked plate. Retailers that only sell raw shrimp are exempt. The Department of Agriculture's guidance applies the rule only to retail counters that cook or steam shrimp ready to eat. If you're picking up a few pounds of raw shrimp for a Lowcountry boil on the back porch, the law doesn't apply to that purchase.
Timing matters too. LOCAL Life's shrimp season guide notes that from January through April, fresh local shrimp generally isn't available. Many restaurants then rely on South Carolina shrimp frozen during the fall harvest, or on imports. A kitchen that buys domestic all fall could switch to the "may contain" wording in winter, and that would be the law working as written. The same guide suggests asking whether the shrimp is local and wild-caught every time you order. It notes that restaurants committed to regional sourcing are usually glad to say where that day's catch came from.
Why Beaufort gets a decal and this end of the county doesn't
The law was a response to a specific problem. Undercover testing of shrimp sold in South Carolina restaurants, done by SeaD Consulting for the Southern Shrimp Alliance, found many restaurants advertising local shrimp while serving imported, farm-raised product. Industry advocates called it "shrimpgate." The bill passed the House 106-0, a margin Beaufort shrimper Craig Reaves of Sea Eagle Market called rare in today's politics.
North of the Broad River, the hospitality industry built a second layer on top of the law. The Beaufort Area Hospitality Association unveiled its "Only From Our Waters" program on September 23 at an event on Ward Creek beside Gay Fish Company. Researchers at the University of South Carolina Beaufort handle genetic verification. The association said 25 restaurants had signed up before launch. Coverage around the Beaufort Shrimp Festival later put participation at more than 25 businesses.
Even inside that program, "local" has a qualifier. The association's director said some businesses committed to local shrimp, while others committed to verified American shrimp while the local fleet rebuilds. The program serves Beaufort, Port Royal and the Sea Islands, and no public list of participating restaurants had been published as of this writing. On Hilton Head and in Bluffton, the state's door sign is the only formal signal a diner gets.
Where the local catch still comes ashore
The fleet supplying all of this is small. Reaves has estimated that eight or nine commercial shrimp boats work out of Beaufort County, compared with 50 or 60 in the 1980s and 1990s. He also told the Island Packet that 85 percent of the shrimping infrastructure has been lost over the past 25 years, and that rising fuel prices hit shrimpers hard this year. Statewide, the shrimp harvest averages about 2.5 million pounds a year, worth around $8 million, which makes shrimp South Carolina's top seafood, according to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
With so few boats, a restaurant where the boats actually tie up is unusual. Hudson's Seafood House on the Docks, at 1 Hudson Road on Hilton Head, says it is the only restaurant on the island with a working fleet of shrimp boats. Third-generation shrimpers Jeff and Skip Toomer dock there to deliver their catch, and the restaurant says a good haul can top 1,000 pounds. Diners on the dock may even see the boats come in. Its current menu lists local shell-on shrimp in the steamed shrimp and the Lowcountry boil.
For raw shrimp to cook at home, the law offers no help, so the market counter is where you ask. LOCAL Life's shrimp season guide names these sources of fresh local shrimp:
- Hilton Head Island: Benny Hudson Seafood, Barnacle Bill's, Piggly Wiggly, South End Seafood, Spanish Wells Seafood & Produce
- Bluffton: Bluffton Oyster Co., Russo's Fresh Seafood, Lowcountry Fresh
- Beaufort area: Sea Eagle Market, Gay Fish Company, Bradley Seafood Market
The same guide suggests looking for the words "South Carolina Wild-Caught Shrimp." It adds that during peak white-shrimp season, many markets can tell you which boat landed that day's catch. Bluffton Oyster Company's market is at 63 Wharf Street. Its posted hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, but that hours page is several years old, so call ahead.
The weeks around the deadline
The law arrives during the busiest stretch of the local shrimp calendar. These dates fall near it:
- October 9 to 18: The Historic Bluffton Arts & Seafood Festival in Old Town Bluffton.
- October 28: Disclosure signs and menu notices are required statewide.
- November 6 to 7: The Hilton Head Oyster Festival, where local shrimp shares the bill with oysters.
- Through December: The fall white-shrimp season usually runs through December, and in good years shrimpers stay out into early January.
Residents with a boat at the marina can catch their own. Recreational shrimpers use two methods. Shrimp baiting opens each September under the state's 60-day baiting season. Deep-hole shrimping is most productive from October through December, when cooling water pushes white shrimp into deeper channels. Both require a South Carolina license, and the daily limit is 48 quarts of whole shrimp. No sign is needed for shrimp you net yourself.
If the shrimp on your plate matters to you, so do the details of where you live. At Ussery Group, we bring the same attention to sourcing and season to every conversation about Moss Creek and the communities around it. When you're ready to talk, Request a Confidential Consultation.
