h<\/em>), the disease hampers the shrimp\u2019s hepatopancreas\u2014a dark, pea-sized organ that functions as both a liver and a pancreas. The disease first emerged in southern China in 2010\u00a0and moved through Vietnam and Malaysia before it reached Thailand.<\/p>\nIn Thailand, AHPND took no prisoners: nearly all shrimp farms were affected. Many shrimp farmers ignored experts\u2019 recommendations to disinfect their ponds and source shrimp from different suppliers. In a 2013 report, the Global Aquaculture Alliance estimated AHPND caused annual global losses of more than US $1-billion.<\/p>\n
While many shrimp farmers struggled to pull a profit out of increasingly beleaguered stocks, Chaiwairuth Arunsopha, the owner of Thongchai shrimp farm in eastern Thailand, started designing a new way to farm shrimp.<\/p>\n
Arunsopha has an open but firm demeanor and approaches shrimp farming with a rather Zen attitude. \u201c[Early mortality syndrome] isn\u2019t going to go away, and it looks like we will have to live with it,\u201d he says. \u201cThe point now isn\u2019t to kill EMS\u00a0but to find a more green, sustainable way to grow our shrimp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arunsopha is no scientist, but he grew up around shrimp, and his approach\u2014instilled by his father who worked in the shrimp business\u2014is that you learn by doing. This\u00a0philosophy\u00a0has driven him to treat his farm like a research base. In 2014, Arunsopha elicited the help of scientist Paisarn Wong-wassana, and they dedicated the entire year to restructuring the shrimp farm, transforming his ponds that used to solely grow shrimp into an experimental closed system.<\/p>\n
Arunsopha\u2019s farm has 33 ponds of four different types, all of which work together. The first type of pond has aerators to keep the water oxygenated, shrimp moving, and sediment concentrated in the center of the pond. The dirty water from the first type of pond is suctioned into the second type, which contains tilapia. The tilapia feed on the waste from the first pond and filter the water. Tilapia flow from their reservoir into a third pond\u2014which contains barramundi, or sea bass, to control the tilapia population\u2014by gravity. Finally, in the fourth pond, minerals and nutrients are added to the clean, filtered water before it is returned to the first pond.<\/p>\n
On Arunsopha\u2019s farm, this closed-loop system improved shrimp survival rates from a baseline of between 30 to 50 percent all the way up to 90 percent. Last year, more than 1,000 people from the Charoen Pokpand group, Thailand\u2019s largest producer of animal feed and livestock, came to learn his methods.<\/p>\n
In regard to controlling AHPND, Peter de Schryver, a microbial ecologist at Ghent University in Belgium, believes that a closed system is \u201cthe future, at least from an environmental perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn nature, everything is in perfect balance: the diversity of species living together in the appropriate densities, surrounded by large volumes of water. All these factors are artificially manipulated in aquaculture to increase culture output, but, evidently, at a cost,\u201d he says. De Schryver believes that the key to controlling AHPND involves maximizing disease resistance of the shrimp and minimizing the chances for the pathogen to develop inside shrimp farms by using closed systems.\u00a0Growing tilapia alongside shrimp has been shown to reduce the incidence of disease outbreaks. However, a closed system is not necessarily a cure-all for AHPND.\u00a0If not properly controlled and cleaned, these systems could propagate issues such as poor water quality or the accumulation of waste.<\/p>\n
Despite his successes, Arunsopha\u2019s experimentation has not entirely freed him from the threat of AHPND. In an email toward the end of January, he told me: \u201cAs I\u2019m typing this, EMS is hitting again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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