Products – Vietnamese Black Tiger Shrimp
Low impact doesn’t even begin to describe the shrimping methods of our farmers in the mangroves of Ca Mau, Vietnam. The technology they use is so simple and so elegant that they don’t even need any feed. Nor do they use fertilizer, hormones, antibiotics or pesticides. Sometimes don’t even have to use electricity. They simply raise the Black Tiger shrimp indigenous to the area, and sell them to us.
Ca Mau is at the very southern tip of Vietnam, washed by the waters of the South China Sea and the Bay of Thailand. Though its mangrove swamps were deforested in the 1970s, the area is now in full recovery. A reforestation program gives 5 hectares of land to farmers who agree to cover at least half in mangroves for sustainable shrimp-farming. These are our farmers.
Mangroves are shrimps’ natural habitat. As the mangrove leaves fall into the water and break down, they release the nutrients that sustain the shrimp; no additional feed is needed. The farmers keep the density in the ponds low so that shrimp do not have to compete for food, and the water can remain clean. Working on the lunar cycle, the farmers fill their ponds at the highest tide of the month, trapping the water by means of a simple gate. When the tides are at their lowest, two weeks later, the farmers raise the gates to their ponds, but leave nets in place to catch the adult shrimp as they try to escape to the sea...
This is sustainable aquaculture at its finest. There is no carbon footprint; the farmers use gravity to change the water in the ponds, and most of them just use their arms to raise and lower their gates and to gather their catch. This is polyculture in action: other native wild shrimp and fish are also washed into the ponds, preventing an unhealthy monoculture from developing, and providing an extra boost to the farmers’ harvests. The results are the restoration of coastal mangroves, a healthy way of life for the farmer, a healthy life-cycle for the shrimp, and delicious, healthy food for you. What could be better?
