USMSFP - U.S. Marine Shrimp Farming Program

HURLOCK, Md. -- Scan the brown, bubbling water, and the untrained eye can't see a living thing. "Focus on the edge, on one spot," says Scott Fritze, co-owner of Marvesta Shrimp Farms, an indoor aquaculture facility here. And, sure enough, right where the artificial pond's black plastic liner meets the algae-covered wooden frame, there's one, then another wriggling crustacean on the move.

"It's really neat when you feed them," Fritze says. "Their little legs grab for the food."

Fritze and partners Andrew Hanzlik and Guy Furman, all 27, are forerunners in the brave new world of indoor shrimp farming. The vast majority of shrimp consumed in the United States is imported from Asian coastal farms that environmentalists say damage coastlines and threaten wildlife, such as sea turtles. But this trio thinks its technologically advanced system of producing a sustainable supply of fresh shrimp year-round in a non-polluting environment may represent the future source of America's favorite seafood -- or at least earn the partners a tiny piece of the market.

They'll have plenty of competition, not just from the frozen imports but, soon enough, from a much larger indoor shrimp-farming facility being built in Virginia.

The three men started small. In 2003, they broke ground and built the first of five hoop-style greenhouses, covered in white polyvinyl, on a five-acre plot surrounded by cornfields in Hurlock, 17 miles east of Easton. Inside are the saltwater ponds, most 140 feet long, 30 feet wide and an average five feet deep, each stocked with shrimp in different stages of development -- from tiny post-larvals to jumbos that are eight inches long, ready for the saute pan.

Furman, with a master's degree in biology and environmental engineering from Cornell University, brought to the project a science background and his thesis on shrimp farming. His childhood pal, Fritze, met Hanzlik at Bucknell University, where each received a business degree. They put together the corporate and development plan.

"We didn't have experience," says Fritze, who like Hanzlik was otherwise headed for Wall Street. "But we did have passion and diligence and saw an opportunity to pioneer this business."

These days, most often dressed in wet suits, all three are up to their necks in shrimp.

The men will not share details on how they heat, circulate, filter and oxygenate the water or how they keep their facility bio-secure. The shrimp are nourished on a fortified, soy-based feed. Fritze will say that there were "not fun years where we were pushed to the edge with peaks and valleys," dealing with power outages, heating failures and water quality issues. Now they are satisfied with their system, which they say is completely recirculating, with no waste products. Water is trucked in from the ocean. And because Marvesta is inland, there is no chance of discharge into waterways.

When Hanzlik grabs a pole net and scoops deep beneath the brackish surface, out come dozens of the creatures, which contract their tail muscles and spring two to three feet in the air. They are a disease-resistant species, L itopenaeus vannamei, commonly referred to as white shrimp because of their color.

Last year, Marvesta's first in commercial production, the men produced 10,000 pounds of medium and large shrimp and sold them, hours after scooping them from the tanks, to 15 high-end restaurants from Easton to Annapolis. At an average $10 per pound retail, prices are comparable to domestic, previously frozen, wild-caught shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico. In the past two months, though, demand has exceeded the supply, and they have stopped, for the time being, taking on new restaurant clients or accepting mail orders at their Web site, http://www.marvesta.com.

Says Fritze: "The market is starved for a fresh producer of shrimp." How starved? It's safe to say that most people in this country have never eaten a fresh shrimp.

The overwhelming majority of shrimp sold in the United States, whether domestic wild-caught or imported farm-raised, are frozen at the source, soon after capture. The delicate creatures deteriorate faster than other seafoods.

"There are two kinds of shrimp: frozen and rotting. Freezing makes for better quality," says John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, which represents shrimpers and processors in eight East Coast and Gulf states. Shrimp freeze well. But in the marketplace, fresh is always considered superior.

The total wild catch, in 2006 a near-record harvest of 300 million pounds, is nowhere close to what we throw on the grill. Nearly 90 percent of all shrimp consumed in the United States is farm-raised and imported from more than 24 countries. Imports totaled more than 1.1 billion pounds last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Most commercial shrimp farms are in coastal areas and consist of a series of large ponds, many made by clearing and damming mangrove swamps or dredging clear-cut forest lands, creating a host of environmental problems.Water quality is often an issue. Multi-acre abandoned farms, no longer suitable for production, litter the coastline.

At many farms, wastewater containing excessive amounts of fertilizers, used to promote the growth of algae for shrimp food, is flushed into the coastal waters. Health standards for the shrimp are sometimes poor, and diseases spread quickly.

To further muddy the waters, in February 2005 the Commerce Department imposed anti-dumping orders and fines on six countries: Brazil, China, Ecuador, Vietnam, India and Thailand. U.S. shrimpers say the decision stopped the deep decline in imported shrimp prices, which have been sliding since 2000. However, U.S. shrimp prices are still at record lows, and the value is similar to that of shrimp in the 1960s, shrimpers complain.

Of the 15 or so commercial shrimp farms in the United States, most are seasonal, outdoor operations in Texas. There is one indoor shrimp in operation in Texas, another in Michigan. (All are monitored and regulated by state and federal agencies.) And skeptics question the economic sensibility of the operations, indoors or out.

"With the competition from imported shrimp, it's virtually impossible to make a profit in shrimp farming," says Bob Rosenberry, editor and publisher of Shrimp News International. "People have been trying to grow shrimp in this country for 40 years, and to the best of my knowledge no farm has made a consistent profit over several years."

But no shrimp farm is quite like the one under construction in Martinsville, Va., near the North Carolina border. Scheduled to begin tests within 90 days, Blue Ridge Aquaculture's 30,000-square-foot indoor facility is expected to produce nearly 50 million pounds of fresh, live shrimp per year, in a total recycling system with no waste or discharge.

"We're going to alter the way people eat fish," says company president Bill Martin. "It's all about volume. And we have no interest in frozen."

Blue Ridge is already one of the largest producers of live tilapia in the country, raising nearly 4 million pounds per year. Most go to Asian restaurants and supermarkets.

"The live market for shrimp has never been serviced, and it's a golden marketing opportunity," says George Flick, Blue Ridge adviser and professor of food science and technology at Virginia Tech. By the end of the year he hopes to have live shrimp in supermarkets in the Washington area.

Marvesta has explored selling live shrimp, but for the time being isn't focusing on it. After the shrimp are removed from the tanks, they are chilled and quickly die before being delivered to restaurants. Plans are underway to build 50 additional greenhouses and produce 250,000 pounds of shrimp by next spring.

J.J. Minetola, executive chef of Metropolitan restaurant in Annapolis, has been buying Marvesta shrimp for the past six months. "These are cool guys with gorgeous shrimp," says Minetola, who buys as much produce, meats and seafood as he can from local farms. "I call the guys at 1 p.m.," he says. "They pull them out of the tank, and by 3 p.m. they're at the kitchen door. That lets you know how fresh they are."

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