EL NINO AND SHRIMP PL’s IN ECUADOR

To: shrimp: yahoogroups.com

Sent: 14 January 2002

QUESTION:

The Pacific coast off Ecuador has definitely warmed up and vannamei females have been spawning copiously. There is 'cualquiera cantidad' (whichever amount) of wild vannamei PL's at 300USD per pound (about 150,000 or US$2/1,000).

So this begs the following questions for Ecuador: Does this mean a good vannamei harvest for Ecuador in 2002 - or four
months down the road? When it starts raining a lot, will this affect negatively the farm grow out/WSSV situation?
Do farmers prefer wild or hatchery PL's still? Any guesses as to what the pond results will be like ? Are these wild PL's now evolved for better survival in response to the environmental presence of WSSV over the last years? Are the hatchery larvae ready in the same way?

Patrick Wood
e-mail: patjwood@hotmail.com

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COMMENTS 1 :

Those sales prices are definitely interesting. At 0.15 / 1000 for nauplii with a hatchery survival of say, 70%, then nauplii cost is only 22 cents or 16% of your final PL sales price. Even if survival was 50% at a bigger PL then a 30% nauplii cost is pretty good. What's the profit margin?

As for IHHNV I haven’t seen that as a problem with vannamei (only stylirostris) in culture. We saw RDS in vannamei in Granmar in 1984 (with Mark Leslie) before it even had a name and that was more of a stocking density/feed/hatchery vannamei problem - never wild larvae.

Anyway the global competition is on and you are right about Ecuador's shrimp farming style being a lot more environmentally friendly then other countries.........it's just that Ecuador is not too good at levering that advantage. This is no doubt due in the end to all the buyers/importers in the rich markets talking about quality but in the end buying on price....

Patrick Wood
e-mail: patjwood@hotmail.com

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COMMENTS 2:

The problem for Ecuador is not that it's no too good at levering that advantage, it's that there is a lot of new players worldwide selling at much lower levels all the time......In the last year, pricing has been a real battle, more so than survivals..... We have been having other countries left and right offering product at significantly lower prices, week in and week out. (Just take a look at China and Vietnam!). Buyers love to see those bargains.

I will like you to make a census of farmers worldwide, and I will bet that the best paid farmers are the Ecuadorians.

Francisco Cordovez
e-mail: Francisco_Cordovez@empagran.com

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COMMENTS 3 :

El Nino will always repeat itself and sometimes masks the real issue of sustainability for the Ecuadorian industry. This is important since the benefits of cheap and abundant seed during El Nino years are not usually shared by any of your other competitors either in Asia or in Central America or Mexico..

It is hard to ignore the availability of cheap seed and the opportunity of this white knight coming to the immediate rescue for Ecuador. This also breeds short-term thinking rather than to develop longer term sustainable plans that will carry the industry forward and better protect it from a whole rash of mom and pop Asian hectares coming on board. Such new production is adding to the supply by expansion of productivity from increases in production area rather than from increased production through efficiency per existing area.

Competition will always be there and it will get worse as Vietnam and China develop their thousands of kilometres of coastline. Their presence will challenge even the kingpins of Asia like Thailand.

Vietnam has already spec'd out over 600,000 hectares for possible development of shrimp ponds and have in the background rose to fourth in Asian exports of shrimp during the last year. This, in spite of the fact that they produce only about half the average per hectare extensive design) as compared to an equivalent system in the Americas.

To some extent, even the Central Americans, Venezuelans, and Brazilians are heads up on the Ecuadorian industry, only because they have never had the cheap seed given to them by mother nature and the slower start in shrimp farming. As such, their longer term business thinking tends to include objectives and plans for building a better animal and sticking to that plan (…).

Leland Lai
ASICo (Aquatic Stock Improvement Comany)
Aquafauna Bio-Marine, Inc.
e-mail: lelandlai@aquafauna.com

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COMMENTS 4:

To my knowledge, most farmers are not in fact waiting for wild seed to arrive, in fact the consensus is that the door has finally closed on this chapter in Ecuador's shrimp farming history.

Although no doubt some farmers will stock wild seed, most are looking forward to the faster growth rates and higher survivals with domesticated seed that are expected during the warm months of the warm wet season and El Niño.

As far as shrimp breeding programs go. Several companies in Ecuador (Costapac S.A. included) are working hard to breed desirable traits into their shrimp. Most, like ourselves, are working with phenotypic election criteria but are aware that genetic marker led selection is well proven in plant and terrestrial animal breeding. When this technology becomes well proven and available at a reasonable price for the shrimp breeding industry then no doubt it will be incorporated into many breeding programs as well.

Peter Larkins
Production Manager
Costapac S.A.
Manta
Ecuador
Home page; www.costapac.com
Email: ventas@costapac.com
Tel 099 748124

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