Sustainable Shrimp Farming—in the Desert

The vast major­ity of shrimp con­sumed in the US—upwards of 88 percent—is imported from Asia. There, entire man­grove forests are uprooted and large ponds are put in their place. 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. Much of the waste from these ponds—which includes high amounts of nitrates—is released into the ocean, where it dam­ages the sea’s ecosys­tems by fos­ter­ing excess growth of algae. On top of the unsus­tain­able meth­ods used to breed and raise these shrimp, they are then flown thou­sands of miles to the point where they are sold and consumed.

Locally Grown Shrimp—Everywhere

Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp is a rev­o­lu­tion: it is shrimp that is locally and sus­tain­ably grown vir­tu­ally any­where. In fact, Blue Oasis’s first fully oper­a­tional shrimp farm has now been opened in Las Vegas, a place not known for its shrimp production.

Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp came about almost by acci­dent. “Our founder, Dr. Lewis Zettell, was work­ing on a project at the Salton Sea in California back in 2001,” Scott McManus, CEO of Ganix Bio-Technologies, devel­op­ers of the Blue Oasis prod­uct, told Organic Connections. “He was devel­op­ing tech­nol­ogy that would help remove some of the harm­ful nutri­ents from the water. At the time he had pur­chased a brine shrimp farm that was actu­ally on the lake, and which had been closed down for a num­ber of years. Part of the test­ing process was to put some life in the water, and his son had the idea to place shrimp into these ponds. Lo and behold, the shrimp grew and were suc­cess­ful, so that is where the idea was hatched. His son really took that idea and started to develop the tech­nol­ogy, which ulti­mately has evolved into what we’re doing today.

“The secret of our tech­nol­ogy is that we have a biore­ac­tor sys­tem, which makes it pos­si­ble for us to man­age the nitrates within the water and to elim­i­nate them cleanly so that we can con­tinue to grow ani­mals. We pop­u­late the ponds with baby shrimp, which pro­duce excre­ment, which over time is harm­ful and must be dis­posed of. Almost 99.9 per­cent of shrimp farms have to dis­charge their effluent—usually into the ocean—because oth­er­wise they couldn’t raise the shrimp. But every­thing we do is recy­cled within our own sys­tem, so we don’t have any detri­men­tal impact on the environment—we’re not pol­lut­ing the oceans, we’re not tear­ing down man­groves, and we’re able to con­trol all aspects of the shrimp’s life from birth to death. It is a closed-loop sys­tem; each pond within our facil­ity is a com­plete ecosys­tem unto itself.”

Needless to say, the prod­uct is sub­stan­tially supe­rior to that of nor­mal shrimp farms. “Our shrimp is very clean, very fresh,” McManus said. “It is also much health­ier. In a typ­i­cal aqua­cul­ture sys­tem in Asia, for every 100 babies you put in there, you maybe get 40 out at the end of the day. The mor­tal­ity rate is very high. We put a 100 in and we get out about 97. It actu­ally makes for a fla­vor pro­file that is dif­fer­ent from indus­trial farm shrimp.”

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Not sur­pris­ingly, these shrimp are not sub­ject to the dis­eases and frail­ties of indus­tri­ally grown shrimp. “Shrimp are extremely sus­cep­ti­ble to dis­ease because of the way they live,” McManus explained. “They come in con­tact with each other, so dis­eases are trans­ferred very eas­ily, and dis­ease in gen­eral trans­fers much eas­ier through water than through air. The antibi­otics added in nor­mal shrimp farm­ing are used to ward off these diseases.

“We start with cer­ti­fied pathogen-free baby shrimp, or brood­stock. This means that we know the lin­eage of that shrimp for a min­i­mum of six gen­er­a­tions, and there has been no dis­ease for that time. Then we put them into our sys­tem, which we con­trol all aspects of, and we only intro­duce the good things that shrimp like. Most ani­mals have some kind of sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to ill­nesses in their genetic code, and much of the time stress will acti­vate them. So we try to put the least amount of stress on the ani­mals as pos­si­ble. We cre­ate within our indoor envi­ron­ment the per­fect sum­mer day: the ‘sun’ comes up in the east and sets in the west; it’s a balmy 80 degrees. They have a pretty good life.”

Currently Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp are sold to restau­rants, but as the orga­ni­za­tion grows and loca­tions are added, the shrimp will be avail­able in stores as well. In addi­tion to its cur­rent Las Vegas farm, plans are being made to build local oper­a­tions in Dallas, Kansas City, Reno, and the greater New York area.

For more infor­ma­tion on Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp, visit www.blueoasispureshrimp.com.