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High Survival Rates Achieved by the
Environment-Friendly Information Technology
The Asia-Pacific region-wide spread of shrimp culture farms, in the development of which I myself was deeply involved decades ago as a youthful marine biologist, has brought vast fortunes to the Asia-Pacific countries south of Japan all the way through Southeast Asia to Oceania, especially the case of Thailand where it grew into the biggest hard-currency earner among Thai export industries. But, as the director of this Laboratory, I must point to the historical tendency of an explosive development of an industrial sector such as what has happened to Pacific shrimp fishery has in the past accompanied various negative consequences. The development of the so-called "industrial" shrimp production has caused the destruction of the Mangrove forests, and then, now polluting the rice paddy fields. I must conclude that, if the trade-off veers heavily toward the negative side of the scale, it will inevitably grow into serious public issues and political problems.
Destruction of Mangroves Which Holds the Key to the Ecological System
The farming of prawns increasingly relied on flooding brackish water areas for culture ponds. The construction of these ponds was proven be very harmful to the health of the wetland ecosystem, and in particular detrimental to the viability of mangrove swamps which are an integral part of the wetland ecosystem. The rising international criticisms, however, have forced the shrimp farms to move inland thereby beginning to destroy the rice paddies instead. But on the other hand, we must also admit the fact that the economic dynamism of shrimp farming is likely to remain viable because of its importance as a primary-sector export business. Thus, the international environmental movement and the shrimp farming industry had been on the head-on collision course, at least until a few years ago.
During the last few years, however, the expansion of the industrial shrimp farming has suddenly come to a grinding halt, and in some cases production suffered serious drops, at the hands of a much more deadly enemy than environmentalists, a virus infection called "White Spot" disease, said to have originated in Southern China, so deadly that it can practically wipe out shrimp farm operators in just a few weeks. At present, it has spread in Japan, most of the Southeast Asian and Latin American countries where shrimp farms concentrate, showing no abating sign in spite of the intensive application of all chemical treatments known in the industry while scientists and government officials continue their effort to develop better means of fighting the disease.
For instance, there is a research team headed by Professor Takahashi of Shimonoseki National Fishery University engaged in the development immunity-enhancing prescriptions and chemical compounds designed to keep the virus out of the shrimp's blood cells. Some of these are being field-tested for actual application, but there is no breakthrough discovery of a fundamental solution yet in sight, and the White Spot disease continues to spread to some of the wild shrimp and crab stocks along the Pacific coastlines threatening to destroy the coastal ecological system. Concern continues to mount over this new virus problem adversely impacting both the environment and all modes of marine cultures.
Development of Scientific Information Technology as a Countermeasure against the new Viruses
A simple explanation of what we call the "scientific information technology" at our Laboratory is in order. All animate and inanimate things possess and emit their own unique information, or waves peculiar to each one of them, manifesting their individual characteristics. Virus is no exception to this, and each type of virus emits its own peculiar set of information, which might be called its "life information." It is believed that at the bottom of such information is the peculiar base configuration contained in a particular DNA. Viruses often threatens the health of other forms of life when activated under optimum reproductive condition inside the cells of the infected. And, even if other external factors such as nutrition, temperature, humidity, PH, etc. change, they do not trigger the disease symptoms if a specific set of information peculiar to the disease are not present and active.
The information technology developed at our Laboratory consists of the method of capturing the information peculiar to each virus, the method of "reversing" such information, the method of storing them in memory device, and further, the method of transferring them to other material media. In terms of tools and equipment, this technology comprises (1) the hard wares; equipment which produces a powerful magnetic field, memory device, memory water, and other media for transmission of information such as ceramic materials, and (2) the softwares; an operating system and associated knowhows of using the equipment, tools and supplies.
In the earlier stage of our research and development, the technology consisted mainly of capturing the virus information and reversing them for application, but today, we have also incorporated immunity information into it. The effectiveness of our virus countermeasures have been significantly enhanced as a result thanks to a recent technical breakthrough achieved at our Laboratory in capturing and reversing immunity information. In the case of shrimps, we first give healthy shrimps an optimum dose of immunity-enhancing agent, and then, when their immunity is boosted up, we take blood sample from which the immunity information peculiar to these shrimps are extracted.
Confirmation of the Effectiveness of the Basic Tests Using the Scientific Information Technology
In the case of the tests conducted at the above-mentioned fisheries university lab, a series of tests were conducted to find out how the survival ratio can be improved and fatality ratio reduced, under a set of different conditions, by infecting healthy shrimps with a heavy, but controlled, dose of vacuole virus. And, as a result, it was confirmed that throughout the consecutive tests, a pronounced improvement in the survival ratio and reduction of fatality ratio, or a statistically meaningful difference, was constantly observed in the case of the shrimps treated with the immunity information.
Results Achieved
We are also making a considerable progress in clarifying the causes for the high survival ratio from the standpoint of microbiology and immunology. As a result of experiments conducted to observe the effective action of the information penetrating from water into the shrimp bodies, it was confirmed that the information were clearly acting to suppress the multiplication of the White Spot virus. Another shrimp attacker is vibrio microbe, and we have been able to confirm the nearly perfect effect of the information in suppressing multiplication from the tests using agar culture medium. In the immunological experiments we conducted, it was found that the voracity indices were up by 5 to 6 times, and the pigment encirclement ability by 2 to 3 times for those shrimps treated with the information in comparison with those treated by the conventional methods. At these rates, the effectiveness of our method is quite comparable to the performance of the new chemical compounds developed by the aforementioned Professor Takahashi' research steam.
No one nowadays wonder any longer why there are so many live shrimps sold in stores and served in Sushi shops all over Japan made possible by shrimp culture, but only a few Japanese know that this aquatic culture technology was first developed by a group of Japanese marine scientists and field experts.
Vacuole Virus Infection's Deadly Threat to Shrimp Farming
We, at the Tokyo Life Science Laboratory, began involved in a research project to develop a new countermeasure using a novel information technology, and an interim report was made pubic in a press conference at the Fisheries Agency press club in February, 1996. Since then, our research activities have been expanded into a new 3-year project for further development of the technology and the methods of its application with the financial support of a few manufacturers of fishery-related electronic instruments and Professor Takahashi of the fisheries university mentioned above.
Method of Treating Live Shrimps with the Two Sets of Information
Of the four options above, the easiest to practice are 1,2, and 4, or any combination thereof. During 1996, we conducted field tests, one in Shikoku Prefecture and one in Malaysia, and then during 1997, second field test was conducted in Shikoku Prefecture for the purpose of confirming the results of the first test. As a result of these, obvious improvements were proven. In Malaysia where we set up two sets of ponds for comparison, 90 ponds were treated with conventional methods and 10 ponds with the above-mentioned two sets of information. The result was that all shrimps in the 90 ponds died out whereas normal harvests were reported from the 10 ponds treated with our information. During 1998, four additional fields tests were conducted including one in Taiwan, and the interim reports seem to indicate that the tests are producing results comparable to those in the past. The final reports are due in the near future.
