Shrimp Breeding - Federal grant funds research at NELHA

BY TRAVIS LOOP
WEST HAWAII TODAY
tloop@westhawaiitoday.com
Thursday, December 2, 2004 9:49 AM HST

Jim Wyban spent Wednesday studying the gene pool.

Workers at High Health Aquaculture, where Wyban serves as president, caught all of the 1,800 Pacific White shrimp raised in a 21,150-gallon tank on the company's property at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii. Each shrimp's weight and size were recorded to determine which families and individuals grew fastest since May.

Yesterday's collection was the first phase of research into selective breeding of marine shrimp to be raised in a low-salinity environment, a project supported by an $80,000 grant from the Small Business Innovation Research program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The goal of this research is to develop a stock of Pacific White shrimp that are adapted to living in low-salinity water," Wyban said. "These shrimp are originally from the ocean."

If High Health

Aquaculture can successfully breed shrimp to thrive in what is essentially freshwater, the operation can be commercialized and shrimp companies on the mainland will purchase the shrimp as breeding stock. Businesses in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas have attempted to harvest shrimp in low-salinity tanks, but they haven't grown well.

"Coastal lands are the most expensive and regulated places, so companies are going inland to find affordable agriculture land," Wyban said.

Creating artificial seawater at an inland facility is also costly and mainland operations would additionally have to pay for heating water during winter months.

" Hawaii has a competitive advantage with our tropical weather," Wyban said. "The companies will be forced to use shrimp developed by us that are genetically adapted to low-salinity water."

Normal seawater contains about 35 parts per thousand of salt, but the water in the tank at High Health Aquaculture has only one part per thousand of salt. Last May, 12 families of shrimp were spawned and injected with color-coded tags at 60 days of age. On Wednesday, the 6-month-old shrimp were collected and measured to create a genetic profile.

"The data shows which families and individuals grew fastest," Wyban said. "We will continue to grow them to be adults, to breeding size, and they will create the next generation -- we are picking the very best genetically."

In about three months, the heartiest shrimp from the fastest growing families will be used to produce another round of families that will also be raised in a low-salinity environment.

"After we do this for two or three generations, we really start to change genetic traits and characteristics," Wyban said.

Shrimp companies will then purchase breeding stock from High Health Aquaculture -- maybe 500 to 1,000 shrimp at a time -- which will produce babies for three to four months before naturally losing reproductive ability.

The federal grant requires detailed mid-term and final reports explaining research results and commercialization prospects.

"We don't have to provide proprietary information about our methodology, but the government wants to see how we are developing a new technology and how it will be commercialized," Wyban said.

The $80,000 in funds is being used to offset the cost of labor, electricity, shipping and supplies necessary for the research.

High Health Aquaculture will be applying for a second grant in February that would provide about $300,000 for a 24-month period. Selection for the second grant is based on results from phase one and competition for the funding is intense, Wyban said.

"There is enough interest in the industry for me to say we are definitely going to do this," Wyban said. "It would be nice to receive the second grant, but the market demand is there for us to go forward either way."