Agriculture and Environment: Shrimp
Environmental Impacts of Production: Larvae and Brood Stock
Most shrimp farms depend on the capture of brood stock (adult females and males that are captured and spawn in captivity) from the wild, while only about 2% of all post-larvae used to stock shrimp ponds are captured in the wild.
Little is known about the impact of these activities.
By-catch - an important issue
However, there is some evidence that for every captured post-larva, 20-40 other living organisms are killed (Boyd and Clay 1998; World Bank et al. 2002). Post-larvae are captured near shore and are taken to land to sort. By-catch is discarded on the land, where it dies.
For an industry that depends on more than a trillion post-larvae annually, this could be a significant issue. However, little is known about recruitment of the different species in the surf areas where post-larvae are harvested.
Because brood stock must be taken live from the ocean (and are caught at night), much more care is taken and by-catch is not seen as a serious issue.
Credits
Extracts from "World Agriculture & Environment" by Jason Clay - buy the book online from Island Press
