Americans are eating more shrimp than ever. For seafood fans, the animals–mostly protein and water–are great additions to a dish fried, baked, or sauteed with some chili flakes, garlic, and lemon. But their popularity is raising questions about the sustainability of raising or catching them. Bycatch can be a problem when fishers net wild shrimp. And shrimp farms are devastating for the world’s precious mangrove ecosystems.
A company called Atarraya had an idea: a Shrimpbox. This shipping container-sized contraption can be plopped anywhere and would hold everything needed to grow shrimp inside. The Mexico City-based company has emerged after two years of being in stealth mode, TechCrunch reported, and now it has a new US office headquartered in Indianapolis.
Inside the Shrimpbox are an automated feeding system, a waste management system, two aeration systems, two tanks, and a control room to monitor the shrimps’ activities. It also houses a biofloc waste removal system that keeps the water clean by promoting the growth of beneficial microbial communities. Each Shrimpbox is semi-automated by a software that can monitor the tanks, which have sensors inside that measure the concentrations of oxygen, temperature, pH, nitrogen dioxide, nitrate, ammonium, turbidity, and alkalinity of the water. Users can even feed the shrimp remotely, or tweak the settings based on the data they receive. The company’s aim was to create infrastructure that is easy to learn and use for prospective shrimp farmers. Multiple containers and components, able to be adjusted and moved, can be combined into a farm.
Recent Comments