British Virgin Islands Spiny Lobster Farm Venulum, a private wealth management company based in the British Virgin Islands, has successfully managed to collect wild spiny lobster juveniles in commercial quantities. Giles Cadman, chairman of Venulum, said it took two years to perfect the collection process. He thinks the company will be capable of replicating it in the Caribbean, Australia and Asia. Cadman said, “The numbers are very impressive, indicating that settlement is spatially uniform and that collection systems perform equally well at depth as on the surface,” so the entire collection process could be done underwater and away from boat traffic. Experimental storage systems have been deployed in favorable, deep locations in the hope that they will be useful for holding juveniles while the farm infrastructure is completed. If effective, Venulum hopes the storage system will reduce the cost and duration of farming operations. A lobster farm has been built on the island

Sources: 1. Danville News. Fire Destroys Chatham Shrimp Nursery. John Crane. April 2, 2010. 2. Danville News. Some Prawns May Have Survived Friday Fire in Pittsylvania County. John Crane. April 7, 2010. United States Virginia—Job, Spiny Lobster Research The Old Dominion University Research Foundation is seeking applicants for a two-year postdoctoral research associate position to work under the direction of Professor Mark Butler on a NSF-funded project using the Caribbean spiny lobster-PaV1 virus as a model. Location: The project’s main field research site in the Florida Keys, with travel to other Caribbean field sites and to the project’s home base at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Salary: $35,000 a year, plus benefits. Start Date: May 2010. Information: Specify Job #10008. Old Dominion University Research Foundation, P.O. Box 6369, Norfolk, Virginia 23508, USA (email odurfjobs@odu.edu). Source: Crust-L, an email-based mailing list for crustacean scientists

Source: GulfLive.com. Gulf Coast Research Laboratory Still Rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina. Harlan Kirgan. April 25, 2010. United States New York—Spiny Lobster, Smaller Sizes Bring Higher Prices! For a free report on spiny lobster farming, click here. Information: Robert Santangelo (robert.santangelo@noaa.gov). Phone 1-212-620-3405, Fax 1-212-620-3577. This information is available online, along with many other fishery market reports. Source: USA Department of Commerce, NOAA, NMFS Website. New York Frozen Seafood Prices. Week Ending Friday, April 23, 2010. United States Virginia—Microsporidian Infections in Crustaceans Jeffrey Shields, Grant Stentiford and Hamish Small are investigating microsporidian infections in crustaceans, infections that often discolor their host’s musculature with a chalky white color. The infections are easy to spot because they turn the bodies of their hosts a creamy white color, instead of their usual brown or pinkish color. Infected crabs

Source: Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) Website. Ca Mau: Black Tiger Shrimp Sales Price Increase. January 18, 2010. Vietnam Fusarium Hits Spiny Lobsters This paper reports on the first case of black gill disease (Fusarium solani, a fungi) in caged-cultured spiny lobsters (Panulirus ornatus). F. solani is frequently isolated from American lobsters Homarus americanus, shrimp such as Penaeus japonicus and P. californiensis, and sharks. Milky hemolymph syndrome, possibly caused a by Rickettsia-like bacteria, has been identified as the biggest disease problem for Panulirus farmers in Vietnam. Source: Aquaculture Asia Magazine. Editor, Simon Wilkinson. Aquatic Animal Health/Black Gill Disease of Cage-Cultured Ornate Rock Lobster Panulirus Ornatus in Central Vietnam Caused by Fusarium Species. Nha, V.V. (lvkhoa©dah.gov.vn, Research Institute for Aquaculture No.3, 33 Dang Tat Str., Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa, Vietnam), Hoa, D.T., and Khoa, L.V. Volume 14, Number-

Country Reports Australia Shrimp and Lobster Farming on the Same Site Everything about the spiny lobster conspires to make it a seafood status symbol. Its porcelain-perfect exoskeleton is overlaid with blue and orange decorations so striking that the word “ornament” appears in its scientific name, Panulirus ornatus. It shuns the cooking pot altogether and is served raw, sashimi style, typically at Chinese weddings. P. ornatus is expensive to produce, but the end product is so valuable, fetching up to $100 a kilogram wholesale, that hatchery-based ornatus farms offer an attractive commercial opportunity. Australian scientists and Lobster Harvest, Pty. Ltd., funded by Australia’s MG Kailis Group, have figured out how to breed this Rolls Royce of lobsters. In December 2009, Lobster Harvest, which has exclusive rights to the technology being developed by the collaboration, said it expects to be in a position to commercialize its hatchery technology in three or four years. Could

part of the Darden Restaurant Group, to study the country’s potential for lobster farming over the next five years. If Red Lobster decides the islands’ waters are suitable, it may set up the country’s first spiny lobster farm. So far, Red Lobster has spent 18 months in Turks and Caicos conducting preliminary research on the island of South Caicos. Its permit allows it to set up a small aquaculture nursery and to grow lobsters—after it does extensive research on local conditions. For a minute-and-a-half video report on the project that includes pictures of spiny lobsters and additional background information on the project, click here. In the video, Wesley Clerveaux, the island country’s Director of Environment and Coastal Resources, said, “Promotion of aquaculture is the desire of the department and the government; it’s a means of diversifying fisheries.... If built sustainably aquaculture could become the future of fishing in the world.” Sources: 1. Turks and Caicos

Seiichi Watanabe AMINO ACID UPTAKE BY THE JAPANESE SPINY LOBSTER Panulirus japonicus PHYLLOSOMA LARVAE 41 10:20 Reza Shah Pahlevi SPINY LOBSTER CO-MANAGEMENT IN LOMBOK ISLAND: THE WAY FORWARD? 10:40 BREAK 11:10 Antonio Garza de Yta, D. Allen Davis, David B. Rouse EVALUATION OF PRACTICAL DIETS CONTAINING VARIOUS PROTEIN SOURCES FOR JUVENILE AUSTRALIAN RED CLAW CRAYFISH Cherax quadricarinatus EEL Thursday, May 22 9:00 - 12:50 Room 101 Chairs: Tae Won Lee, Hideki Tanaka 9:00 Hideki Tanaka, Kazuharu Nomura, Shin-Kwon Kim, Tadahide Kurokawa ADVANCES IN FRY PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES OF JAPANESE EEL Y 9:20 Juan F. Asturiano, David S. Peñaranda, Luz Pérez, Víctor Gallego, Miguel Jover, Sylvie Baloche, Sylvie Dufour MOLECULAR AND PHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY OF ARTIFICIAL MATURATION IN THE EUROPEAN EEL MALES: FROM BRAIN TO TESTIS THURSDA 9:40 Tomoki Abe, Shigeho Ijiri, Shinji Adachi, Kohei Yamauchi IN VITRO OOCYTE MATURATION AND OVULATION, FOLLOWED BY FERTILIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN JAPANESE

British Virgin Islands Lobster Farm Scheduled to Harvest First Crop in 2009 Caribbean Sustainable Fisheries (CSF), a lobster farm on the island of Tortola, hopes to market its first crop of spiny lobsters in 2009! The Venulum Group (a multi-national private wealth management firm) is a major shareholder in CSF. Venulum specializes in alternative investments that are often not available to the general public. It was formed in 2002, and now has offices in four countries. It has a substantial number of clients in the USA. Information: Chris Pattison, CJP Intelligent Marketing, 53–54 Brooks Mews, London W1K 4EG, United Kingdom (phone +44-(0)-207-491-4443, email enquiries@pr-sending.co.uk, webpage http://www.letscreate.it). Source: eNewsWire. British Virgin Island’s Sustainable Fisheries Project links up with University of Plymouth’s Marine Institute for PhD Placement. Anita Rienstra. February 10, 2009. Canada Graduate Student Positions in Lobster Health The AVC Lobster

Greg Jensen (gjensen@u.washington.edu): These artificially created videos are all too common. A friend who works in the Bahamas once told me about a TV film crew that came to document the queuing behavior of spiny lobsters. They brought along a long, Plexiglas tube to shove lobsters into, just in case they couldn’t find any actually forming lines. Jim Cutler (jculter@mote.org): Certainly, the video was cleverly embellished. The following account, however, regarding a snapping shrimp and a squid is rather remarkable and illustrates that shrimp can ambush unwary prey. The woman telling the story worked for me, and I am sure her description is accurate. She observed the event in a 30-gallon aquarium. I cannot tell you the species of shrimp or the squid, but both were local and could possibly encounter one another in the wild. She sent me these comments after viewing the video of the snapping shrimp killing the cleaner shrimp: Remember when my snapping shrimp in the benthic lab killed

Source: Times Live. Prawn Again. Shelley Seid. November 15, 2009. United States California—Shrimp News International, Updates to Free Reports Page Hi, I’ve added a summary of a new publication on spiny lobster farming to the Free Reports Section of this site. You can check it out here. Source: Bob Rosenberry, Shrimp News International, December 4, 2009. United States Louisiana—Shrimp Fishermen Accuse Local Processors of Price Fixing For the past decade, the shrimp industry has battled a rising tide of shrimp imported from Thailand, Indonesia, Ecuador and elsewhere. The imports have pushed down wholesale prices for the largest domestic shrimp to about $1 a pound, the lowest level in decades. Now, a fight has broken out between shrimp fishermen and shrimp processors. Local shrimpers accuse processors of price fixing, mislabeling imported shrimp as “domestic” and misusing a chemical (tripolyphosphate) that leaves them waterlogged and rubbery. Processors dismiss the