USMSFP Note: Although our membership is primarily concerned with the progress of marine- or saltwater-grown shrimp, we find this story to be particularly compelling because of the success and growth of the Malaysian prawn industry in Ohio.
Laura Tiu, of the Ohio State University Research Extension Center in Piketon, can be reached via email at tiu.2@osu.edu or by calling (740) 289-2071

Ohio's farmers expand into shrimp aquaculture

By Fran Henry
The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer

File this under W for "Who knew?"

Shrimp. Raised in Ohio. For sale.

Sure, you have to do the dirty work, separating the tails from the heads, but you'll be getting the freshest shrimp possible - within minutes of capture. And they're jumbo, as in 10 or less to the pound. The biggest can weigh a quarter- pound each.

They taste good, too, perhaps milder than marine shrimp, and they cook up more quickly than what we're used to finding in the stores. Most of the shrimp Americans find in the stores, by the way, comes frozen from Asia and South America.

The only problem with these freshwater Ohio-raised shrimp - Malaysian prawn, to be exact - is that they're harvested just once a year, around the third weekend of September, and they're not available in grocery stores.

If you want some, you have two choices: Go to the farms where they're raised or go to the fourth annual Ohio Fish & Shrimp Festival in Urbana. The shrimp cost around $8 a pound.
The competition to buy is pretty stiff, New London shrimper Bob Calala said.

" It's first-come, first-served, bring your own ice and coolers. One guy in St. Marys sold over 500 pounds of shrimp in less than an hour," he said.

The good news is that since 2001, when the first two Ohio farmers began to raise shrimp, their numbers have grown to around 25, with 12 licensed to sell their harvests. The number of farmers raising various kinds of fish has grown from 33 to 150.

Shrimping is a good way for farmers to add another new stream of income, said Laura Tiu, aquaculture specialist at the Ohio State University Research and Extension Center in Piketon. An acre of pond can yield $2,000 to $5,000 of shrimp.

Ohio's growing season is short, 45 to 60 days, and they require little labor, maybe 20 minutes or so a day tossing in the feed. Then there's one long harvest day.

But it's a fun long day, Calala said. "It's always exciting to see what you've got."

Some shrimpers drain their ponds and catch the shrimp as they spill out of the drain pipe. And some, including Calala, lower the pond's water level and then corral the shrimp in seines at one end.

They're put into ice water, then onto ice.

"It's humane because their metabolism stops. It also stops decomposition," Tiu said.

While aquaculture is 30 years behind the rest of agriculture in Ohio, Tiu said, it will profit from past mistakes.

"You might be wiser to have 10 small ponds than one large one and to develop best management practices for sustainable growth," she said.

Shrimp farming was illegal in Ohio until 2001, even though farms were developing in Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana guided by Kentucky State University research.

"The state had to be talked into letting us raise shrimp," Calala said. He's president of the Ohio Aquaculture Association.

At issue was the possibility that shrimp could endanger the balance of life in Ohio's waterways, like the European zebra mussel did after being accidentally introduced into Lake Erie in 1986. The mussels quickly spread to all the Great Lakes and along St. Lawrence Seaway and the Hudson, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, and Tennessee rivers, causing serious economic problems along the way.

The association lobbied the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division to re- evaluate its stance based on the facts that shrimp can't live below 55 degrees and they need to be in salt water during early stages of development.

In the wild, the shrimp eggs drop off the female's tail in freshwater rivers. Then the river washes the newly hatched shrimp into the ocean, where they eat brine shrimp. When they reach adulthood, they swim back up river to repeat the life cycle.
In captivity, after the eggs hatch in fresh water, they're moved into a saltwater tank and fed brine shrimp for about 35 days. Then they're transitioned back to fresh water to attain full growth.

Last year, Calala kicked up the Ohio shrimp market a notch when he began supplying shrimp stock for farmers to raise to maturity.

"If freshwater prawn are going to be successful in Ohio, we had to have a nursery," he said.

He was the likely volunteer because he and his brothers, Louis Jr. and David, co-own Calala's Water Haven Inc., a producer of soft-shell crayfish for bait. The business operates on the 132-acre farm Calala's father bought in 1963 and engraved with a 90-acre network of 60 ponds.

In late April, Calala bought half his shrimp stock - each a minuscule .1 gram - in Kentucky and then took a 20-hour nonstop trip to Weatherford, Texas, with his daughter, Theresa, to pick up the other half. He said he didn't want to put all his eggs "in one basket." He bought 350,000 babies this year, three times as many as last year.

Back home in New London, Calala transferred the babies to heated nursery tanks of water, where they could grow in comfort. When they were about the size of a dime and outdoor ponds had warmed up to the 60-degree minimum, Calala delivered stock to 25 Ohio growers, as well as growers in Tennessee, West Virginia and Mississippi. They cost 10 cents apiece for 500 or fewer shrimp and 8 cents apiece for 500 or more. Of course, he saved some for himself.

"The nursery has made a difference, offering a better quality stock," aquaculture specialist Geoff Wallet said. He is also the facility coordinator for the Piketon Research Center.

He and Tiu are farming shrimp in the center's one-acre pond and researching multiple harvest techniques. Their hope is to help farmers hedge their bets against bad weather or low customer turnout. They also offer an all- day shrimp school in early spring, where they teach pond building and management and shrimp husbandry.

Shrimp farming requires a permit from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

"We'll forge ahead in a sustainable way," Tiu said. "Aquaculture is here, and it's only going to get bigger and better."

DETAILS
Shrimp sale
When: 10 a.m. until they're gone, Saturday, Sept. 17.
Where: Calala's Water Haven, 421 Ohio 60, New London; this is the closest farm to Cleveland.
Cost: $8 a pound.
Info: 419-929-8052.

Source:
Cleveland.com
Plain Dealer reporter:
fhenry@plaind.com
216-999-4806