[ NEWS INTERNATIONAL ] USA: GAA counters scientist’s calculation of shrimp farming’s carbon footprint The Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) has reacted strongly to the figures on the carbon footprint of shrimp farming in a presentation by a scientist at the 2012 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. According to GAA President George Chamberlain, the presentation by J. Boone Kauffman, an ecologist at Oregon State University, arrived at carbon footprint values “that are not applicable to the vast majority of shrimp aquaculture practiced today.” In his briefing paper Kauffman said that 50 to 60 percent of shrimp farms
are constructed in former mangrove areas, have annual productivity of just 50 to 500 kilograms per hectare and are abandoned in just three to nine years. Based on these assumptions he concluded that a 100 g production of edible shrimp had a footprint of 198 kg of carbon. “Only about 3 percent of the current global farmed shrimp production is raised under the conditions on which Kauffman based his calculations,” said Chamberlain citing research by aquaculture scientist Claud
Boyd and Jason Clay of the WWF that estimated that less than 10 percent of historic mangrove loss resulted from shrimp farm construction. The practice of converting mangrove areas to shrimp ponds essentially stopped almost two decades ago due to strong regulatory and industry pressure. The main causes of mangrove loss are agriculture, salt evaporation ponds, mining and infrastructure development. Although common in the 1980s, low-density culture methods as described by Kauffman are currently confined to
limited areas of Bangladesh, Indonesia and southern Vietnam, and now represent only a few percent of the total global shrimp harvest. It is inaccurate to assume that shrimp ponds have a lifespan of three to nine years, said Dan Lee, GAA Best Aquaculture Practices standards coordinator. Mangrove ponds in Ecuador and Honduras are still in operation after 40 years, and traditional “tambak” ponds have produced fish and shrimp in Indonesia for hundreds of years.
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Eurofish Magazine 2/ 2012
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