Upwards of 88 percent of the shrimp consumed in the US is imported from Asia, where entire mangrove forests are uprooted and replaced with large industrial shrimp ponds. Shrimp are raised in the same way as other industrial livestock—in cramped conditions and given antibiotics to combat the escalating diseases that threaten them from such conditions, along with hormones for growth. The majority of waste from such ponds—which includes high amounts of nitrates—is released into the ocean, where it fosters excess growth of algae and severely damages marine ecosystems. Once shrimp have been farmed and raised using these unsustainable methods, they are flown thousands or even tens of thousands of miles before being sold and consumed.
Increased awareness of food sources by discerning consumers, however, is causing this situation to change—and giving rise to some remarkable innovations in shrimp farming. One of these innovations comes from a brand of sustainably farmed shrimp called Fisherman's Daughter, available from sustainable seafood company CleanFish. For several years, the brand has represented wild shrimp caught using methods that greatly reduce the by-catch—other species caught up in shrimp trawling. Now, however, a new technique of shrimp farming, still in developmental stages as far as large-scale production goes, holds amazing promise and may very well be yet another vector of shrimp farming in the future.
“Fisherman’s Daughter farmed shrimp are the closest thing to a free-range shrimp you could have and still call it shrimp farming,” Tim O’Shea, co-founder of CleanFish, explained to Organic Connections. “They utilize aquapods, which are really 360-degree Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes. The shrimp don’t need so much fish feed because they’re eating what they would normally eat—it’s collecting around the cages. Because of that, the feed conversion rate is very low. In some cases they’re experimenting to find out what will happen if they give the shrimp no artificially introduced food at all and let them eat nothing but what comes in through the cages, because that’s what they’d be eating if they were on the ocean floor themselves.”
Fisherman’s Daughter is a product of the Valdez-Cervantes family, who have been fishing on Mexico’s Sea of Cortez for generations, and the way that the name and the product came about makes for an insightful story.
“Back in 1994 or 1995, my youngest sister was in second or third grade,” Gustavo Valdez, developer of the Fisherman’s Daughter brand, told Organic Connections. “She went on a field trip with her class, and on that field trip they were visiting the docks of fishing boats here in Guaymas. The class was about all of the challenges for the environment that the fishing industry represented. Most of the kids in her class started teasing her and making fun of her and just basically being cruel to her, telling her that her family was to be blamed for the depletion of the species in the oceans.
“From that moment she was very sensitive to the matter and would ask or harass my dad with a lot of questions, basically questioning our way of life. Eventually this became a point of reflection for my parents, which led them to decide that it was really time to change the way things were being done. And since it was the daughter of a shrimp fisherman who brought up the issue back then, when the folks at CleanFish heard about this they thought it would be a good name with a story behind it.”
Raising shrimp in aquapods has a number of positive benefits, both for the shrimp and for the environment. “On one side you have economic advantages, which include a better food conversion ratio because the shrimp are in an open system,” Valdez explained. “A cage out in the ocean takes full advantage of the nutrients already there in the water. Also along the economic line, there is a big saving in the cost of energy. In traditional farms you have huge areas with ponds that constantly require water, and the electricity to pump those amounts of water into the system is simply enormous. Because we’re in a place where the flow of the water is natural, we don’t have to spend any money on pumping. So those are two huge advantages just in the economic approach.
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“You end up with a much healthier, more natural product, as it is far away from all of the aquaculture areas that are on shore. Over the last two seasons here in Mexico, farm shrimp have been devastated by what is called white spot disease. We don’t have that problem, and we don’t have to treat our shrimp with chemicals or antibiotics. We also do not use hormones. The environment in which the shrimp are kept is very pristine. The constant flow of ocean water into the cages has been calculated by a mathematics center here in Mexico, and just the interchange rate of water in our system is about 4,500 percent a day. So there’s clean water constantly flowing through the cages.
“And then we also have no invasion or destruction of nearby environments, in comparison to continental farming. Our cages are placed almost seven miles offshore, where the impact that the system has on the environment is almost negligible.”
The shrimp raised with these sustainable innovations is also packaged in bags made of a special biodegradable plastic that breaks down in just five years.
In addition to bringing sustainably produced seafood to shrimp lovers everywhere, Valdez is providing hope to his fellow fishermen on the Sea of Cortez. “Our product also has a social impact,” he concluded. “For the last three decades the shrimp fishing industry here in Mexico has been declining—not only on an industrial scale but also on a artisanal scale. Every year the fishermen have a complicated struggle to keep on with their ways of living because each day the catch is lower and lower. What we’re trying to accomplish here is an alternative for the shrimp fishing industry and also for the artisanal fisherman.”
For more information on Fisherman’s Daughter shrimp, visit www.cleanfish.com/upstream/fishermans-daughter-shrimp/ocean-grown.
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