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

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

Australian Researchers Close the Life Cycle on the Spiny Lobster, Panulirus ornatus Located on a 207-hectare coastal site in the state of Queensland and surrounded by a national park and marine reserve, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) is at the forefront of spiny lobster research. Greg Smith and co-workers at AIMS recently closed the life cycle of the spiny lobster, Panulirus ornatus, which passes through eleven delicate and complex larval stages, beginning with tiny, spider-like larvae about the size of a match head and ending with a puerulus (postlarvae), which resembles an adult lobster, only smaller. Throughout this period, the developing larvae are called “phyllosomas”. In the wild, they are planktonic, reaching a final length of about 30 millimeters. Then they metamorphose into puerulii (postlarvae, still planktonic), followed by the juvenile phase when they settle on the bottom. The metamorphosis from phyllosoma to puerulii is an event as dramatic as the

Source: PacificShipper.com. Company disputes Customs’ shrimp testing. R.F. Edmonson. January 12, 2009. Indonesia Sulawesi—Spiny Lobster Farming Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes), a large, irregularly shaped island in the Indonesian archipelago, is recognized by the government as a major area for the development of mariculture. In Sulawesi, the most commonly farmed spiny lobster species is Panilurus versicolor in cage (5 x 5 x 3 meters). Farmers feed the lobsters low-value fish. The seedstock, as is the case with spiny lobster farming throughout Southeast Asia, is wild-caught. The wild seedstock supply is based on a tribal fishery in the waters surrounding the Tiworo Islands. The seedstock is typically a young lobster of about 100 grams. They are fattened for 12-14 months and sold live to local wholesalers for export. Photo: Typical cage farms in Kendari Bay, southeast Sulawesi. Lobsters are stocked at a density of 50 animals per cage and harvested at 750-1,000 grams. The

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: AsiaOne Business. Small Fry Is Big Business in China. Justin Chan. November 24, 2009. Ecuador History—Phil Boeing, Spiny Lobsters In a response to a report on spiny lobster farming on the Free Reports Page, Phil Boeing, who has managed shrimp farming operations throughout the Western Hemisphere, writes: In the early 1980s, in Ecuador, I collected some wild spiny lobster (Panuliris gracilis) juveniles (68 to 76 grams) and grew them with and without ablation in tanks. They grew to 794 grams in 13 months with ablation, but only to 375 grams without ablation. It’s a pain to collect wild juveniles. If you could control the temperature and inexpensively shock them into molting, they could become an attractive candidate for farming. Information: Phil Boeing (pboeing@dc.rr.com). Source: Email from Phil Boeing to Shrimp News International on November 22, 2009. Ecuador Cover, Advertisers and Table of Contents of Ecuador’s Aquaculture Magazine Source: Email from Jorge

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

Source: Bangkok Post. Thai shrimp exports thriving as consumers tighten belts. Phusadee Arunmas. April 13, 2009. United States Florida—Spiny Lobster Diets Tested Abstract: This study compared and evaluated the performance of seven diets for first instar juvenile spiny lobsters (Panulirus argus, 5–6 millimeter carapace length) based on growth rates, survival and feed conversion ratios. Results demonstrated that a fresh seafood-based diet produced the fastest growth rate (3.49% weight gain a day and 0.90% carapace length increase a day over a 28-day period). These growth rates were also reflected by a low feed conversion rate (3:1) for the fresh seafood diet. Similar results were obtained with juveniles fed a frozen seafood diet, however, frozen brine shrimp, Artemia salina (both enriched and unenriched), frozen enriched mysis shrimp, a dry pellet and a meal-based diet did not produce consistent growth rates. Survival rates ranged between 38% and 85%. Source: Electronical Larviculture

The Netherlands Lobster Three Wageningen University students have set up South Sea Exclusive, a company that specializes in sustainable spiny lobster farming in the Philippines. A number of financial institutions put up $568,000 to get the farm started. South Sea Exclusive’s lobster will hit the market in two years. The firm hopes to be the largest producer of spiny lobsters in Southeast Asian by 2015. Source: Radio Netherlands.nl. Growing sustainable lobsters to save the world. Thijs Westerbeek van Eerten (translated by Radio Netherlands). September 12, 2008. Saudi Arabia A Very Critical Situation? Radhupal (radhupal@yahoo.com): Everyone knows that shrimp farming in the Middle East, mainly Saudi Arabia, is going through a very critical situation. Can anybody throw some light on the issues, problems and solutions of growing shrimp at high temperatures in high salinity waters? Haydar H. Al Sahtout (alsahtout@yahoo.com): Would you please elaborate and clarify. What do you mean