page_title: Marine shrimp farming
section_title: Ecological impacts
hierarchical_section_title: Marine shrimp farming / Ecological impacts
caption_attribution_description: English: Bottom of a shrimp pond after the harvest (i.e., after the water has been drained and the shrimp have been collected) on a shrimp farm in Indonesia, showing a toxic sludge containing pyrite (FeS2). Contamination of a pool with Pyrite leads to stunted growth of the shrimp and increased mortality rates, and the cultivation of plankton (as food for the shrimp) is slowed down exponentially.
context_page_description: Marine shrimp farming is an aquaculture business for the cultivation of marine shrimp or prawns for human consumption. Although traditional shrimp farming has been carried out in Asia for centuries, large-scale commercial shrimp farming began in the 1970s, and production grew steeply, particularly to match the market demands of the United States, Japan and Western Europe. The total global production of farmed shrimp reached more than 1.6 million tonnes in 2003, representing a value of nearly 9 billion U.S. dollars. About 75% of farmed shrimp is produced in Asia, in particular in China and Thailand. The other 25% is produced mainly in Latin America, where Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico are the largest producers. The largest exporting nation is India.
  Shrimp farming has changed from traditional, small-scale businesses in Southeast Asia into a global industry. Technological advances have led to growing shrimp at ever higher densities, and broodstock is shipped worldwide. Virtually all farmed shrimp are of the family Penaeidae, and just two species – Penaeus vannamei and Penaeus monodon – account for roughly 80% of all farmed shrimp.
context_section_description: Shrimp farms of all types, from extensive to super-intensive, can cause severe ecological problems wherever they are located. For extensive farms, huge areas of mangroves were cleared, reducing biodiversity. During the 1980s and 1990s, about 35% of the world's mangrove forests had vanished. Shrimp farming was a major cause of this, accounting for over a third of it according to one study; other studies report between 5% and 10% globally, with enormous regional variability. Other causes of mangrove destruction are population pressure, logging, pollution from other industries, or conversion to other uses such as salt pans. Mangroves, through their roots, help stabilize a coastline and capture sediments; their removal has led to a marked increase of erosion and less protection against floods. Mangrove estuaries are also especially rich and productive ecosystems and provide the spawning grounds for many species of fish, including many commercially important ones. Many countries have protected their mangroves and forbidden the construction of new shrimp farms in tidal or mangrove areas. The enforcement of the respective laws is often problematic, though, and especially in the least developed countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, or Vietnam the conversion of mangroves to shrimp farms remains an issue for areas such as the Myanmar Coast mangroves.
  Intensive farms, while reducing the direct impact on the mangroves, have other problems. Their nutrient-rich effluents (industrial shrimp feeds disintegrate quickly, as little as 30% are actually eaten by the shrimp with a corresponding economic loss to the farmer, the rest is wasted) are typically discharged into the environment, seriously upsetting the ecological balance. These waste waters contain significant amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics that cause pollution of the environment. Furthermore, releasing antibiotics in such ways injects them into the food chain and increases the risks of bacteria becoming resistant against them. However, most aquatic bacteria, unlike bacteria associated with terrestrial animals, are not zoonotic. Only a few disease transfers from animals to humans have been reported.
  Prolonged use of a pond can lead to an incremental buildup of a sludge at the pond's bottom from waste products and excrement. The sludge can be removed mechanically, or dried and plowed to allow biodecomposition, at least in areas without acid problems. Flushing a pond never completely removes this sludge, and eventually, the pond is abandoned, leaving behind a wasteland, with the soil made unusable for any other purposes due to the high levels of salinity, acidity, and toxic chemicals. A typical pond in an extensive farm can be used only a few years. An Indian study estimated the time to rehabilitate such lands to about 30 years. Thailand has banned inland shrimp farms since 1999 because they caused too much destruction of agricultural lands due to salination. A Thai study estimated 60% of the shrimp farming area in Thailand was abandoned in the years 1989–1996. Many of these problems stem from using mangrove land that has high natural pyrite content (acid sulfate soil) and poor drainage. The shift to semi-intensive farming requires higher elevations for drain harvesting and low sulfide (pyrite) content to prevent acid formation when the soils shift from anaerobic to aerobic conditions.
  The global nature of the shrimp farming business, and in particular the shipment of broodstock and hatchery products, throughout the world have not only introduced various shrimp species as exotic species, but also distributed the diseases the shrimp may carry worldwide. As a consequence, most broodstock shipments require health certificates and/or to have specific pathogen free (SPF) status. Many organizations lobby actively for consumers to avoid buying farmed shrimp; some also advocate the development of more sustainable farming methods. A joint programme of the World Bank, the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA), the WWF, and the FAO was established i
caption: Toxic sludge oozing out of the bottom of a shrimp pond of a farm in Indonesia after the harvest. The liquid pictured here contained sulfuric acid resulting from oxidation of pyrite contained in the soil. Such contamination of a pond leads to stunted growth of the shrimp and increased mortality rates; the growth of the plankton is reduced drastically.[62] Liming can be applied to counteract to some extent the acidification of the water in ponds on acid sulfate soil,[63] such as mangrove soils.[64]
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