Country Reports

Australia

Gold Coast Marine Aquaculture

Located at the mouth of the Logan River in Woongoolba, Queensland, Gold Coast Marine Aquaculture farms giant tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) in 41 ponds covering 37 hectares, with plans of adding 12 more hectares of ponds.

Nick Moore, Gold Coast’s general manager, served on the Australian Prawn Farmers Association for 14 years and was the general manager of Seafarm, Pty., Ltd., Australia’s largest shrimp farm for over 19 years.  Moore said: “Due to the treatment system for our farm, we find that the quality of the discharge is often better than the river water, especially on total suspended solids!  The secret of our exceptional discharge quality is our water treatment system and good pond management.  Our treatment system occupies 30% of the farm.  All of the effluent travels through this system, which incorporates a settlement pond divided into ten sections, each one linked to the next.  This enhances the retention time...allowing a longer time for suspended solids to settle out...as well as increasing bioremediation...by aquatic plants and fish (mullet and milkfish) that are in the pond.”

The farm has two onsite hatcheries.  “We have used our own broodstock for the last five years and supplemented it with some wild caught broodstock from Northern Queensland and the Northern Territory,” said Moore.  “Each year we select from thousands of our own stock and only take 200 or 300 from the wild.”  In 2006/2007, Gold Coast stocked 20% of the farm with postlarvae from captive broodstock, a number that will probably increase to 40% in 2007/2008.

With the daily water quality monitoring the farm can ensure the shrimp have the best possible conditions.  “We have an average water exchange of 1-2% a day over the life of the crop and each pond is set up with 20 horsepower of aeration.  We use air injectors and paddlewheel aerators,” said Moore.  The farm utilizes lined ponds with walls, stocks between 30 and 40 postlarve per square meter, harvests between eight and ten tons per hectare per year, and achieves survival rates as high as 73%.

The prawns are fed a commercial diet produced by Ridley AgriProducts (Australia) and Charoen Pokphand (Thailand).  “We try to use Australian food when possible.  We are currently achieving a food conversion ratio of 1.5-1.7, which we are happy with,” said Moore.

Gold Coast employs 17 people during the winter (May-August) and up to 29 when harvesting.  It produces one crop per year; the ponds are stocked in September and harvested at the end of April.

Once the shrimp reach 30 grams or more, the pond is harvested and the shrimp are taken to an onsite processing plant (grading, cooking and freezing) that can handle a ton of shrimp an hour.  The plant is both AQIS and HACCP certified.  Markets are mostly wholesale but Gold Coast sells direct to the public from Tuesday through Friday (8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.).

Information: Nick Moore, Gold Coast Marine Aquaculture, Marks Road, Woongoolba, Queensland, Australia (phone 07-5546-1361, fax: 07-5546-1492, email nickmoore1@bigpond.com).

Source: Austasia Aquaculture.  Tim Walker, Editor-in-Chief (AustasiaAquaculture@netspace.net.au).  Farm Profile/Stocking density management critical for Gold Coast prawn farm.  Andrina Fay and Dos O’Sullivan.  Volume 22, Number 1, Page 3, March 2008.

Bangladesh

Where Did the Shrimp in My Curry Come From?

Fred Pearce’s book, Confessions of An Eco Sinner: Travels to Find Where My Stuff Comes From, is published by Eden Project Books.  In it Pearce says: “My investigation began in Manchester, England, with Iqbal Ahmed, known among Britain’s Bangladeshi community as Mr. Shrimp.  Ahmed first introduced giant tiger shrimp [Penaeus monodon] to Britain in the 1980s.  They made him rich and made Manchester the unlikely shrimp capital of Europe.  Ahmed’s company, Seamark, supplies tiger shrimp to thousands of curry houses and pubs across Britain.”

“I wanted to find out where the shrimp in my Saturday night curry came from.  That is how I ended up standing beside a pond in the blazing sun in southwest Bangladesh with Amal as he pulled one of the first shrimp of the new season from his pond—and told me about the shrimp mafia that lies between this patch of former mangrove swamp and my plate.”

“Meeting Amal, I collided with a world of poverty, debt dependency, usurious middlemen and ruthless gangs, known locally as musclemen, paid by the big landlords to keep people like Amal in check, or throw them off their land.  One gang was threatening to stop water from the river reaching Amal’s pond unless he paid a fat bribe.”

“The local papers have reported killings by the musclemen.  But the police are often in cahoots, and investigating who is behind this quiet terror is dangerous.  In 10 years, 14 news reporters have been murdered in the area for probing too deeply.”

“The economics, too, is breathtaking.  Amal gets just pennies for raising shrimp that turn up on my plate in London for $19.61.  Why?  Because between his pond and the processing plant 10 kilometers away in Khulna, those shrimp pass through no fewer than seven sets of middlemen, each taking a cut.”

Source: The Guardian.co.uk.  A wise course of action.  John Vidal.  April 23, 2008.

Bangladesh/India

Smuggled Fry from India Introduces Virus in Bangladesh

Shrimp farms in southwest Bangladesh, the heart of the country’s shrimp farming industry, have been hit with viruses from low-quality, virus-infected postlarvae smuggled into the country from India.  Every day huge quantities of postlarvae are smuggled into southwest Bangladesh from the state of West Bengal in India.  The Indian postlarvae cost about half as much as locally produced postlarvae.  Some Bangladeshi hatcheries secretly buy the substandard postlarvae from smugglers and sell it to the unsuspecting farmers as locally produced fry at high prices.

Source: Seafood.com (an online, subscription-based, fisheries news service).  Smuggled fry from India blamed for introducing virus into Bangladesh shrimp ponds.  Ken Coons (phone 781-861-1441, email kencoons@seafood.com).  Editor and Publisher, John Sackton (phone 781-861-1441, email jsackton@seafood.com).  April 28, 2008.

Egypt

Wanted—Help with Shrimp Hatchery

Mohamed (lordelshamy@yahoo.com): I’m new to shrimp farming, and really interested in starting a shrimp hatchery.  I have six hectares of land on the Red Sea.  I need information on how to build, equip and run a shrimp hatchery.

I would also like to know how much it would cost to hire a shrimp hatchery consultant for a year?

Source: The Shrimp List (a mailing list for shrimp farmers).  Subject: Shrimp Hatchery.  April 24, 2008.

India

Penaeus vannamei

The Union Ministry of Agriculture may permit Penaeus vannamei farming soon.  In the state of Andhra Pradesh, production trials with P. vannamei yielded positive results.

Source: The Hindu.  Vannamei shrimp may enter farms soon.  K.P.M. Basheer.  April 26, 2008.

India

SPF Tiger Shrimp from The Shrimp List

Philip Leger (p.leger@inve.be): A shrimp (Penaeus monodon) seed multiplication center is being established in the state of Andhra Pradesh to produce specific pathogen free (SPF) shrimp seedstock, with technology from Moana Technologies of Hong Kong.  At full capacity in about three years, the center will produce about three billion, genetically improved, SPF postlarvae a year.

Kunjumon (shrimpseeds@yahoo.com): In India, the rivers, creeks and backwaters are all contaminated with the whitespot virus, and disease outbreaks are everywhere.  Will the new SPF tiger shrimp be able to revive the shrimp farming industry in India?

Shubam Labam (gulfcrevette@yahoo.com): Many claim success with SPF, but when questioned on consistency and economics, they conveniently keep silent or offer questionable excuses.  How can we discover the truth?

Kunjumon (shrimpseeds@yahoo.com): As a layman in this field, I would like to know the prospectus for farming SPF tigers in India.  Some say SPF tigers will solve all our problems, while others say SPF tigers are prone to whitespot and other diseases.  A company has already started a SPF tiger hatchery in Andhra Pradesh and has contacted us about its product.

Victor Suresh (avsuresh9@yahoo.com): When shrimp farming in Southeast Asia was suffering from various viral diseases, the introduction of SPF P. vannamei revived the industry.  Starting with clean animals lowered the risk of a crop failure and gave farmers the confidence to stock their ponds.

Some people thought it was the vannamei that was responsible for all the success and wondered why they should pay a high price for SPF when they could get cheaper, non-SPF vannamei.  They tried it, and it created all sorts of problems, including the introduction of diseases that were not previously present in the region.

SPF is a proven technology in poultry and swine production.  Its history in aquaculture is relatively short, but no less convincing.

It is true that SPF tiger shrimp are relatively new and have not been widely tested.  But, given the success with the use of SPF in general, there is a good chance that SPF tiger shrimp will work.  The viruses are not going to disappear because of SPF shrimp; biosecurity rules still need to be followed.

Alex Wong (alexwongnl@yahoo.com): SPF is just one of the hundreds of things that you have to do to be successful at shrimp farming.

Kunjumon (shrimpseeds@yahoo.com): Currently, most hatcheries test broodstock (pre-spawning and post-spawning), nauplii, early PLs and late PLs for viruses, but we still get whitespot outbreaks in our ponds.  If we go for SPF tigers with the same infrastructure and techniques, what is our chance of getting a good crop?  We’ve tried several crops over the last four or five years, but all in vain.  Will SPF make a difference?

Victor Suresh (avsuresh9@yahoo.com): There is ample proof that starting with clean animals increases the likelihood of a successful harvest.  The vannamei introductions in Southeast Asia demonstrated this by showing that SPF vannamei worked and non-SPF vannamei failed.

Please don’t be confused by people who don’t understand SPF and provide ridiculous arguments that do not merit a response.  Environmental conditions and skill levels in India are similar to those of most other shrimp farming countries.  In many of those countries, vannamei has been an instant success.  Indonesia’s CP Prima, probably the largest shrimp farm in the world, acquired Shrimp Improvement Systems (Florida, USA), an exporter of specific pathogen free vannamei broodstock, because it knew the importance of starting a crop with clean seed.  SPF production involves much more rigorous quarantine, diagnostics and control over the life cycle of the shrimp than regular hatchery production of shrimp seed.

I agree that SPF tiger shrimp is not as proven as SPF vannamei, but that’s only because the SPF vannamei has been around a lot longer.  If you are risk averse, just sit back and watch the progress of SPF tiger shrimp until you think the time is right to give them a try.

Dallas Weaver (deweaver@scientifichatcheries.com): When you start with SPF PLs in a clean pond, you then need to think about diseases coming in with your water.  In the case of whitespot, you need to screen the water down to 50 microns to get rid of any potential wild carriers and then let the pond sit for a while to let the free viruses decay away.  After controlling the water and starting with a disease-free pond and specific pathogen free water (whitespot free), you then need to make sure wild animals (birds, otters, frogs) are not bringing in the pathogens.  Only by controlling all sources can you produce a pathogen-free crop.

Joe Mann (joey10110@gmail.com): SPF shrimp are only checked for “specific” pathogens...not “all” pathogens.  Don’t be drawn into a false sense of security.  If a particular pathogen is economically important to you, make sure it’s on the list of pathogens that your postlarvae are free of.

You must also protect your farm from virus carriers.  Crab nets are simple and effective against crabs.  Bird proofing in some areas is essential.  Make sure your water is disease free.  If unhealthy, non-SPF seedstock is introduced to the pond, you’ve wasted your time, energy and money.  Similarly, if the pond is not managed to keep it disease free, no matter what seedstock is used, SPF or non-SPF, diseases are likely to strike.

SPF vannamei seedstock is proven throughout the world and out performs P. monodon.  The jury is still out on the SPF monodon.  The figures I have seen don’t excite me, but no matter what, SPF is better that non-SPF.

Source: The Shrimp List (a mailing list for shrimp farmers).  Subjects: Shrimp seed multiplication centre to be established India; and SPF Tiger.  March 23 through April 23, 2008.

India

Harvesting Astaxanthin from Shrimp Shells and Selling It for $195 a Gram!

The all pervading stench from waste at a seafood market in the heart of Coimbatore in the state of Tamil Nadu inspired 27-year-old Renuka Karuppuswamy to turn the stinking shrimp waste into a health food supplement.  “I wanted to do something about it and find a solution to this smelly problem,” says Karuppuswamy, who is now a food science and technology doctorate student at the School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

She has developed a process for removing astaxanthin from shrimp waste that eliminates the problems associated with solvent extraction methods.  Her process works at lower temperatures, recovers more astaxanthin and causes less degradation of the end product than other methods.

The astaxanthin, recovered from shrimp waste has ten times more powerful antioxidant capacity than beta-carotene, the common antioxidant found in fruits and vegetables.  In Australia, the shrimp astaxanthin sells for $195 a gram!

Source: Lifestyle In MSN.com.  Prawn waste turned to health food.  April 24, 2008.

India

All India Shrimp Hatchery Association

On April 10, 2008, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, the new All India Shrimp Hatchery Association (AISHA) selected the following slate of officers:

President: L. Satya Narayana, Samudra Hatcheries, Kakinada

Vice President: S. Muthu Karuppan, (CEO) Poseidon Bio-Tech, Chennai

Vice President: Dr. N. Sambha Siva Rao, Vishnu Hatcheries, Nellore

Secretary: Y. Ravi Kumar (M.D.), Vaisakhi Bio-Resources (p), Ltd., Vizag and Chennai

Joint Secretary: G.B. Rajsekhar, Sea Park Hatchery, Onogle

Treasurer: G. Venkateshwar Rao (M.D.), Maruthi Hatcheries, Kakinada

AISHA has a vital role to play in the introduction of SPF Penaeus vannamei and P. monodon in India.

Information: Ravi Kumar Yellanki, Managing Director, Vaisakhi Bio-Resources (p) Ltd., D. No 49-38-15/3, NGGO’s Colony, Akkayyapalem, Visakhapatnam - 530016, India (phone 0091-98481-95821, fax 0891-251-7800, email yellra@rediffmail.com).

Source: Email to Shrimp News International from Ravi Kumar Yellanki.  Subject: Formation of new bodies.  April 25, 2008.

Indonesia

CP Prima Today

Jakarta...On May 9, 2008, while the rest of the Indonesian stock market dropped slightly, Thompson Financial/Reuters reported that the shares of CP Prima, the largest shrimp farm in the world, rose 6% to 270 rupiah.  Market analysts warned that Indonesia’s inflation could hit double-digit levels by the end of 2008 if the government hikes prices on subsidized fuel.

Source: Interactive Investor.  Indonesian shares close flat as miners’ gains offset by inflation fears.  Roffie Kurniawan (roffie.kurniawan@thomsonreuters.com).  May 9, 2008.

Indonesia

Threatened with Dumping Action

The United States has advised the Indonesian government to revise its shrimp transshipment policies or face dumping duties.

Source: Seafood.com (an online, subscription-based, fisheries news service).  Indonesia threatened with U.S. anti-dumping duty if it doesn’t ban transshipment of shrimp.  Ken Coons (phone 781-861-1441, email kencoons@seafood.com).  Editor and Publisher, John Sackton (phone 781-861-1441, email jsackton@seafood.com).  April 29, 2008.

Oman

Job—Shrimp Hatchery Manager

Bentout Seafood has a position open for a shrimp hatchery manager.

Closing Date: July 1, 2008.

Qualifications: Eight years experience, experience with P. indicus a must.

Information: Phone 968-244-85-641, email bentout@omantel.net.om.

Source: AquaNic (The Aquaculture Network Information Center, a gateway to the world’s electronic aquaculture resources).  Jobs Directory in cooperation with the WAS Employment Service.  Search jobs.  Shrimp Hatchery Manager.  Posted: May 7, 2008.

United States

North Carolina—Penaeus monodon Alert

Tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon), native to the West Pacific, have been found in North Carolina waters and could pose a threat to native shrimp species.  Consequently, the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries is asking fishermen to be on the lookout for them in their catches.  Fishermen reported capturing three P. monodon in 2007, two in waters of the Pamlico Sound and one offshore from Bogue Banks.  During the past several years, tiger shrimp have also been reported in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.  It’s believed that they escaped from aquaculture facilities.  The impact on native species is unknown.

Source: The Leland Tribune.  Fishermen asked to report Tiger Shrimp catches.  April 28, 2008.

United States

Washington DC—FDA and ACC

The USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seeking comments on whether it should use third party accreditation schemes—like the Aquaculture Certification Council's shrimp standards—as part of its criteria in determining how extensively imported food should be tested.  The agency is exploring the idea that third party certification schemes that meet FDA standards could be used as a factor to reduce direct inspections.

FDA issued the following request for comments:

In the wake of a bevy of food recalls over the past two years, a number of companies including Wal-Mart have turned to third party firms to offer a certification that products are what they claim to be.  This has not gone unnoticed by the government, and FDA is now requesting comments on the use of third-party certification programs for foods and feeds.  FDA seeks more information on the existence and use of these types of programs to better understand how they can help to ensure that food products are safe, secure and meet FDA requirements.  FDA is looking for comments from industry and the public on this process.

Information: Comments can be sent to the Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061, Rockville, MD 20852 USA.

Source: Seafood.com (an online, subscription-based, fisheries news service).  FDA seeks comments on using standards, such as GAA’s shrimp certification scheme, in its food safety.  Editor and Publisher, John Sackton (phone 781-861-1441, email jsackton@seafood.com).  April 23, 2008.

Venezuela

Shrimp Farm for Sale

Location: Western Falcon State.

Status: Not in production.

Size: 1,000-hectares leased, 420 with permits.

Ponds: eleven 7-hectare ponds completed, one 7-hectare pond completed, but with no harvest gate; ten 10-hectare ponds completed but with no inlet or outlet structures.

Pumping Stations: One for first twelve ponds, one for the ten ponds without water control structures.

Equipment: Two 36-inch pumps (2.5 cubic meters per second).

Buildings: Warehouse for food and fertilizer, dormitories, bathrooms, kitchens, dinning rooms, office and laboratory.

Production: 2,000 kilos of shrimp per hectare in 160 days.

Information: Biólogo Miguel Angel Madriz (miguelmadriz@cantv.net, phone 0414-6830786).

Source: Bob Rosenberry, Shrimp News International, May 6, 2008.

Vietnam

Shrimp Farmers Switch to Rice

As rice prices soar, many shrimp farmers in the Mekong Delta are switching back to rice farming, reversing a trend that began over five years ago.

Source: VietnamNetBridge.  Farmers switch to rice as price triples.  April 24, 2008.

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