Thailand's Shrimps Are Dying En-Masse, And No One Can Figure Out Why

[Lite Beer]

Thailand’s shrimps are dying en-masse, and no one can figure out why
By Shane Danaher and Praj Kiatpongsan on 17.03.2013 at 1:44 pm


Tom Yum Goong no more? Prawn farms in Thailand have been hit with an epidemic of Early Mortality Syndrome. Photo: Praj Kiatpongsan

Typically, prawn farmers in Chanthaburi province stock their ponds in January or February, with the intention of harvesting that crop just before April’s Songkran holiday. This year, however, things have turned out differently.

“Only 30% of all farmers have started stalking,” says Chakarin Pecharoen, Chairman of the Chantaburi Shrimp Farmers Club. “[The last quarter of 2012] netted a decrease of around 20-to-30%. But I have a deep feeling that the production in this first quarter might turn out to be something very horrible.”

Many shrimp ponds in Chanthaburi and throughout Thailand remain bone dry at this late point in the season because of fears about a scourge affecting crustaceans regionwide. EMS (Early Mortality Syndrome) is a phenomenon as mysterious as it is deadly and in the past three years, it has threatened to undermine Asia’s commercial shrimping industry.

Reports of EMS first surfaced in 2009 in China, where farmers noticed that their prawns had begun dying en-masse, without any identifiable cause.

In the commercial shrimping industry, where occasional epidemics are par for the course, a Chinese die-off failed to qualify as news. However, as the months proceeded and dead shrimp continued to pile up, the statistics became too massive to ignore.

By 2011, shrimp farms in China’s Hainan, Guangdong, Fujian and Guangxi provinces were suffering losses as great as 80%. Without a specific pathogen to blame, farmers christened the disease according to its immediate effect – Early Mortality Syndrome.

From China, EMS made the leap to Vietnam and to Malaysia, where it left similarly massive swathes of devastation. In 2011 and 2012, EMS wreaked havoc on Vietnam’s shrimping industry. The province of Tra Vinh saw 330 million shrimp die in the month of June 2011 alone. Aquaculture news outlet The Fish Site used terms like “widespread devastation” in describing the outbreak.

Malaysia, where EMS first emerged in 2010, displayed a similar pattern. Between 2010 and 2011, its commercial prawn industry demonstrated a year-on-year decrease in production of roughly 42%.

“It’s a huge phenomenon,” says Daniel Gruenberg, CEO of Sea Garden Foods, an aquaculture and shrimp farming company in Chonburi province. “Just to give you a measuring stick, I had some friends that sell [prawn feed] and if they look at their year-on-year feed sales they’re down 70% to 80%. It’s massive.”

In Thailand, EMS has not racked up a death toll as large as those seen in China and Vietnam. However, since the phenomenon’s 2011 appearance in the Kingdom, its effect has been drastic, and increasingly difficult to ignore.

EMS first arrived in the eastern provinces of Chanthaburi and Rayong, where it has caused year-on-year decreases in prawn production as high as 40% by some accounts.

Even worse than the EMS itself is the panic it has engendered among local farmers. Gruenberg speculates that as many as 80% of the shrimp farmers in eastern Thailand have chosen to leave their ponds dry, rather than risk their capital by stocking shrimp that may or may not survive to maturity.

Full Story: http://www.coconutsbangkok.com/features/thailands-shrimps-are-dying-en-masse-and-no-one-can-figure-out-why/

-- Coconuts Bangkok 2013-03-17

[ratcatcher]

P O L L U T I O N ? Is this possibly partly responsible?

[MaxLee]

P O L L U T I O N ? Is this possibly partly responsible?

No, you are absolutely imagining things, there is no such thing as pollution in Thailand, not if the sh*****tloaders say so...

[seajae]

unfortunately the asian breeders look for the easiest way to make money so they tend to not worry about any types of pathogens that might cause problems and end up with this sort of thing happening, if they started watching what they were doing and making sure that they did the right thing technically we might see prawn farming improve. In Australia they went through a learning curve as to what they needed to do, quick turn around doesnt mean really good health issues for them, lets hope they learn to do it right but it doesnt effect me as I do not eat prawns in Thailand as they are bland and totally tasteless, I wait till I go to Australia for a holiday and eat good ones.

[h90]

years ago, they put huge amount of antibiotics into the water and the shrimps died from viruses.

Most probably again virus.

[BlackJack]

hey lets blame global warming - err sorry climate change - err sorry - GMP genetically modified prawns - er the floods - ever mind

[MissFarmGirl]

all Farms my area have this problem sometimes.

usually it is when baby prawn is 1 month old, then have problem up to 2 month old

after 2 month, prawn not have problem.

it not pollution

we know when prawn have problem because they come to surface of pond and have many birds above and want to eat the prawn.

usually after 2 weeks problem finish

sometimes more then 50% of the baby prawn die and if have fish also in pond the prawn become food for fish

[krisb]

Not good but Thai prawns taste awful anyway. Can't stand em compared to Australian prawns.

[Phronesis]

Oh...now I understand why farm prawns are sold for 300 THB per 100 GRAMS (3000 THB per kilo) in Patong....

But hang on...how come in can buy a kilo of the same prawns at my local talud in Chern Taleay nut for 200 THB...

[Jmann1976]

Consult with the USDA website they will monitor this and come up with solutions. You know Americans are not all that bad sometimes.

[smokie36]

all Farms my area have this problem sometimes.

usually it is when baby prawn is 1 month old, then have problem up to 2 month old

after 2 month, prawn not have problem.

it not pollution

we know when prawn have problem because they come to surface of pond and have many birds above and want to eat the prawn.

usually after 2 weeks problem finish

sometimes more then 50% of the baby prawn die and if have fish also in pond the prawn become food for fish

Thanks for an honest and accurate reply.

Makes the article appear somewhat sensationalised in my opinion.

[Locationthailand]

A probably cause is the use of sulphate of ammonia and urea (not blood and done) on soil nearby (or even distant) as this leeches into the water in the ponds. It is a common cause of fatalities of fish in golf course ponds in Thailand. Use of fertilisers on open land will find its way into these ponds if not isolated during construction with a membrane or mud/clay coating. Similarly if they are topping up from irrigation channels they will suffer the same fate. Just a thought but it happened in Australia in the Riverina district when cattle and sheep became sick as well as down Australia's largest river, the Murray when water in Queensland from rice farms leeched and Barramundi died in right down to the Victorian border (1,100 miles at the time).

[David48]

A probably cause is the use of sulphate of ammonia and urea (not blood and done) on soil nearby (or even distant) as this leeches into the water in the ponds. It is a common cause of fatalities of fish in golf course ponds in Thailand. Use of fertilisers on open land will find its way into these ponds if not isolated during construction with a membrane or mud/clay coating. Similarly if they are topping up from irrigation channels they will suffer the same fate. Just a thought but it happened in Australia in the Riverina district when cattle and sheep became sick as well as down Australia's largest river, the Murray when water in Queensland from rice farms leeched and Barramundi died in right down to the Victorian border (1,100 miles at the time).

Could you supply the news item or scientific research on which you base your post?

.

[Pimay1]

Consult with the USDA website they will monitor this and come up with solutions. You know Americans are not all that bad sometimes.

We don't need no stinking USDA. We are Thailand.

Seriously though this would be the best route to get to the bottom if the issue.

[ChrisY1]

Shame this disease can't be contracted by some of the pollies.!!

[Phronesis]

Aquine bird flu?

[ratcatcher]

Aquine bird flu?

Crust Asian Flu?

[FWIW]

Consult with the USDA website they will monitor this and come up with solutions. You know Americans are not all that bad sometimes.

We don't need no stinking USDA. We are Thailand.

Seriously though this would be the best route to get to the bottom if the issue.

I can assure you that Thailand is not ignoring this matter. Thailand has several internationally respected experts on shrimp diseases, and they are trying to find the cause.

[FWIW]

A probably cause is the use of sulphate of ammonia and urea (not blood and done) on soil nearby (or even distant) as this leeches into the water in the ponds. It is a common cause of fatalities of fish in golf course ponds in Thailand.

Maybe. But you have to fit that with the disease apparently starting in China in one year, spreading to Vietnam and Malaysia in the following years, and then to Thailand.....

[bigbamboo]

hey lets blame global warming - err sorry climate change - err sorry - GMP genetically modified prawns - er the floods - ever mind

You forgot Abhisit.

[h90]

Consult with the USDA website they will monitor this and come up with solutions. You know Americans are not all that bad sometimes.

Does it require spy airplanes fly over area claimed by China?

[h90]

hey lets blame global warming - err sorry climate change - err sorry - GMP genetically modified prawns - er the floods - ever mind

You forgot Abhisit.

or the invisible hand

[yorkie100]

Interesting article in the Mail on Sunday.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2294246/Love-eating-prawns-Youll-right-tell-THEY-fed-on.html

[Somtamnication]

Must be due to all the **** they are eating.

Edited March 17, 2013 by Scott
Profanity edited out

[Bluespunk]

Aquine bird flu?

Crust Asian Flu?

very good, very good indeed

[aarn]

Most of the posts here are on the spot. 'New' diseases in intensively-farmed animals are often due to viral or chlamydia-like agents, which can become lethal, or even cross species barriers,

when the target population is subject to stress such as pollutants, overcrowding, and/or dietary deficiencies.

You only have to look at the seawater here in Thailand (and Malaysia) - usually quite turbid. Excess phosphorous/nitrogen load from agriculture (fertilizer) and domestic runoff (like, detergent used for washing clothes). Good for plankton growth, and thus jellyfish proliferate.

Thus the great advances in commercial Thai prawn/shrimp farming are coming at some cost to the rest of the environment. Now maybe the emergence of a 'new' disease, as the water and feed sources for the shrimp also subject to pollution.

Sorry to be a little technical, old vet pathologist in his cups... AA

[Thai at Heart]

Wouldn't the flood possibly have dumped just a few possible pathogens in the water

[ginjag]

There is a gangster that is at fault. Al Caprawn

[Locationthailand]

A probably cause is the use of sulphate of ammonia and urea (not blood and done) on soil nearby (or even distant) as this leeches into the water in the ponds. It is a common cause of fatalities of fish in golf course ponds in Thailand. Use of fertilisers on open land will find its way into these ponds if not isolated during construction with a membrane or mud/clay coating. Similarly if they are topping up from irrigation channels they will suffer the same fate. Just a thought but it happened in Australia in the Riverina district when cattle and sheep became sick as well as down Australia's largest river, the Murray when water in Queensland from rice farms leeched and Barramundi died in right down to the Victorian border (1,100 miles at the time).

Could you supply the news item or scientific research on which you base your post?

.

Sorry David this was years ago in the 80's. I don't have access to that material now. But I am sure you will be able to find affects of Urea or Sulphate (or simply fertilisers) on water pollutants on the web. This was when I was working those districts with farmers who had the Australian CSIRO working out what the problem was. The issue with the rice leeching was caused by an American company who had purchased vast areas of western Queensland and dammed the origins of the Murray and Darling Rivers in order to irrigate rice crops. They had heavily fertilised and there were many Barramundi fish being found dead along the banks interstate in New South Wales. This also contributed to some major droughts in the lower reaches of the river due to the damming. There was much ado about that around 2000-2002.

[Locationthailand]

A probably cause is the use of sulphate of ammonia and urea (not blood and done) on soil nearby (or even distant) as this leeches into the water in the ponds. It is a common cause of fatalities of fish in golf course ponds in Thailand.

Maybe. But you have to fit that with the disease apparently starting in China in one year, spreading to Vietnam and Malaysia in the following years, and then to Thailand.....

Yes - I am only mentioning this as it was unexplained at the time and was not as such, a disease, but a pollutant. This has yet to be established here. I did mention it as just a thought but I think, plausible.

Edited March 17, 2013 by Locationthailand