WILD HARVEST
OF BRINE SHRIMP
From: Mary Felley felley@public.hh.nm.cn
To: saltlake@topica.com
Date: 13 March 2002
QUESTION:
I am searching for information on the environmental
effects of wild harvest of brine shrimp Artemia sp. This is an
economically important activity for households that harvest the shrimp in
desert lakes in the Badan Jarain and Tenggeri deserts of Inner Mongolia,
China.
Issues that occur to me as possibly relevant are:
- reduction in prey availability for migratory water birds
- damage to lakebed or lakeshore vegetation by harvesters
- sustainability of levels of harvest
Apart from a single reference relating to Lake Abert, Oregon, USA
(http://www.hmsc.orst.edu/odfw/devfish/sp/brine.html),
I have found no discussion about the possible environmental effects or
management measures.
As I do not have access to a research library here, I would be most grateful
if anyone can point me to Web-based references or to researchers working in
this area. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Mary Felley
Alxa League, Inner Mongolia
e-mail:
felley@public.hh.nm.cn
***************
COMMENTS
1 :
I believe the below link can provide you with
direction and data. This is the Lab for Aquaculture and Artemia
Reference Center at the Univ. of Ghent, Belgium. Dr. Sorgeloos' Lab
has been the center for Artemia Research worldwide for 25 years.
Most of the activities by man on salt lakes around the world is not for the
adult biomass but for the cysts, which when dried, provide an ideal product
for larval culture of many marine and fresh water species. Most of the
biomass that is harvested for aquaculture and the pet markets are
accomplished from the salt ponds of solar evaporation systems, not from salt
lakes.
Kindest regards,
Howard W. Newman
Desert Lake Technologies, LLC
http://www.desertlake.com
hwnewman@desertlake.com
or
bshrimp@aol.com
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/aquaculture/general/general.htm
***************
COMMENTS 2:
While we've studied Artemia populations in Mono Lake
for many years, the commercial fishery here is small and has negligible
impacts on the population. I would expand your literature search by
going to ISSLR's web site (www.isslr.org)
and going to the Great Salt Lake links and to the online bibliography where
you could do a search on "Artemia and harvesting" or something
like this.
Robert Jellison, Secretary/Treasurer
International Society for Salt Lake Research
University of California
Rt 1 Box 198
Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546, USA
Tel. 760-873-6445
e-mail:
jellison@lifesci.ucsb.edu
***************
COMMENTS
3 :
We have an extensive fishery for brine shrimp on
Little Manitou Lake
and this last fall also on Big Quill Lake which has become more saline
with the greatest drought on record (since 1890). I am not aware that
there are any problems environmentally since the only beaches used are
sandy. The speed of the harvesting boats is also very slow to increase
efficiency so sediments are not stirred up.
Ted Hammer, Professor Emeritus
Biology, University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, Sask., Canada
e-mail:
hammert@duke.usask.ca
***************
COMMENTS
4 :
I have been working for a couple of years in
various saltworks located around the Bohai Bay in Eastern China. Most of the
time I was dealing with Artemia harvests from those solar evaporation ponds.
An article that might be of interest to you is
"Production Dynamics of Brine Shrimp (Artemia franciscana) in
the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge" by Michael Donaldson,
1989. If you're interested I can send you a photocopy (contact me
off list at geertss@sfbb.com
if you want; I have part of my literature coming my way again).
According to the author, prey reduction for water-birds due to commercial Artemia
harvesting was almost non-existent in the solar evaporation ponds of the SFB
Area.
You actually have lakeshore vegetation at the sites
where you're working? There's limited vegetation to be found on the shores
of the ponds in Chinese coastal saltworks. In these saltworks,
farmers harvest Artemia by walking through the ponds whilst
dragging a net behind them. This does stir up the bottom quite a bit. Is
it damaging? Don't know ... guess this depends from the point of view you
are taking.
Where sustainability is concerned ... that really
depends on the (algae) productivity level of the ponds, the time of
harvesting, method of harvesting, salinity (fluctuations), etc. etc.
Knowing China and the Chinese quite a bit, I assume the Artemia
harvest to be carried out manually and periodically at your site as
processing and transporting Artemia (biomass) over large
distances in China is not economically feasible.
Steve Geerts
Biologist
San Francisco Bay Brand, Inc.
e-mail:
geertss@sfbb.com