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Threatened Mangroves and Rice Paddy Fields
The Virus Attacks Are Triggering an Asia-Pacific Region-Wide Crisis for Shrimp Farms
The shrimp culture technology originating in Japan has spread into East Asia, Southeast Asia, and later the Latin American countries, bringing about a tremendous economic benefit to the farmers and fishermen in much of the developing countries of Asia and Latin America. All this notwithstanding, however, the rapid expansion of shrimp farms has also resulted in continuous environmental destruction and water pollution, and in its wake a fearful crisis of vacuole virus infection nearly annihilating the shrimps once the virus strikes. It struck Indonesia, the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines, mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan in East Asia.
That whatever we human beings do, even if out of a good will, can bring about terrible consequences beyond our imaginations has been proven by the development of the shrimp culture technology. Besides, since it originated from Japan, I believe we have the obligation to know what the technology has brought about to the life of the peoples of Asia. In a sense, the Asian industrial shrimp problem to us Japanese resembles the American methyl bromide problem to Americans. But, the important difference is that, while in the American people initiated and sustained a nationwide campaign against methyl bromide and other harmful insecticides, we Japanese have not paid too much attention to the problems caused by the shrimp culture technology in Asia.
Let us look into the depth of this industrial shrimp problem for a moment. In addition to what I have already said in the page titled " Scientific Information Technology Confronting the Vicious Virus Attack on Shrimp Farms," For more information on what's going on outside Japan, and who are doing what, I strongly recommend that you check out the following Internet sources for specific information and their accessible sources.
Introduction
Since February 1997, we have been watching the World Wide Web for sites and pages addressing the question of the sustainability of shrimp production. We describe the information resources and also make some judgments as to the quality of the various sites themselves. The tone of this directory will be familiar to anyone who has spent even a few hours "surfing the net". However, it should not obscure the seriousness of the growing worldwide discussion, dialogue, and debate about this major industry and its significant environmental and social impacts.
We hope that this directory will serve to encourage concerned agencies, organizations, and companies to expand and improve their sites or to create new ones. Those seriously interested in these issues need to go beyond what is now available on the web and request information directly from the institutions. Also it is critical to remember that there are many institutions and communities with a strong interest in these issues, particularly in developing nations, which do not have access to the Internet.
Thus, we need to make a special effort to assure that their views and voices are heard and considered.
S. Jacob Scherr
Shrimp Sentinel
"If there are no mangrove forests, then the sea will have no meaning. It is like having a tree with no roots, for the mangroves are the roots of the sea."
--Fisherman on the coast of the Andaman Sea, Trang Province, Southern Thailand.
The increased demand for shrimp in world markets has encouraged many developing countries to enter into the practice of shrimp farming which has had a significant impact on the world's mangrove forests because of over production. Thailand has become the world's leader in shrimp exports, and in turn, the greatest violator of mangrove conservation. The mangroves are essential to the region's ecosystem......
301-504-6559; FAX: 301-504-6409
afsaqua@nal.usda.gov
Just as we cannot, and should not, take away the strawberry the fields from the California farmers, we cannot, and should not, take away the shrimp farms from the Asian and Latin American shrimp farmers. And, the only solution we should look for is to find a much less harmful and toxic, if not completly harmless and nontoxic, substance and/or methods by which we can build a scheme which will allow us to preserve the environment intact while also permitting the producers of shrimps and tomatoes to continue feeding the rest of us with unpolluted foodstuff. This will most likely require all of us to move out of the conventional chemical-based farm technology, and move on to find something much safer and easier to handle . Our Laboratory will continue to embraces this concept and move on to perfect our research on the safe information technology.
Chairman
Agricultural Research Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
10301 Baltimore Ave., Room 304, Beltsville, MD 20705-2351
