by Stephen Rappaport

CLEWISTON, FL – In 2001, OceanBoy Farms grew a scant 100,000 pounds of Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) on its farm in Labelle, FL, located far from the ocean at the edge of the Everglades.
Steven Walton.
The harvest and sale of that first commercial crop confirmed company founder David McMahon’s vision of raising marine shrimp in low salinity water utilizing a closed, two-phase production system with zero water discharge. But it was only a first step.

This year, OceanBoy will harvest some 1.2 million pounds (head on) of certified organic shrimp, most of it grown on the company’s Little Cypress farm, located in the heart of the Everglades, about 25 miles south of the company’s headquarters and processing plant in Clewiston, a small town on the shore of Lake Okeechobee.

Over the next few years, the company has plans for a six-fold increase in production capacity at Little Cypress, while maintaining the Labelle farm primarily as a research and development (R&D) facility.

“We’re making a very full transition from R&D into a commercial enterprise,” said Steven Walton, OceanBoy’s new president and chief operating officer (COO), describing the continuing growth and apparent success of this unique US shrimp farming company.
Stephen Rappaport photos
With two decades of shrimp farming experience, Mike Mogollon, senior vice president for science and technology, knows every facet of the operation at OceanBoy’s Little Cypress farm.
Walton’s recent appointment would seem to further confirm his statement.

He comes to OceanBoy after a successful marketing career with such consumer product giants as Unilever and ConAgra. He has been involved in the development and marketing of popular consumer brands such as Peter Pan Peanut Butter and Wesson Oil.

Walton will apply his skills to developing a growing market for OceanBoy’s “Florida Sweet Shrimp” brand.

Currently the company sells its certified organic product through such well-known retailers as Publix Markets, Costco.com, and others.

Organic, fresh, delicious

OceanBoy relies on several factors to market its product.

Perhaps foremost is that its shrimp have been certified as organic by Quality Certification Services (QCS), a USDA National Organic Program compliant certification program.

The company also relies on its ability to control the flavor of its shrimp through its complete control of their diet. Another huge factor is the freshness of its product.

According to Walton, iced fresh shrimp reach the company’s 10,000-square-foot processing plant within 45 minutes of harvest.

Within another 45 minutes, the shrimp have been sorted, deheaded, and are ready for shipment either fresh or as raw or cooked IQF product, depending on the customers’ specifications.

Currently, Walton said, demand for OceanBoy’s shrimp is so strong that he expects the entire production to be sold as fresh product.

Room to grow

OceanBoy raised its first crop at its Labelle farm.

Although the company now has 17 production ponds at Labelle, most of its current crop is being grown in two dozen 1.6 hectare (4 acre) production ponds located on the 900-acre Little Cypress farm.
Electrically powered paddlewheels provide most of the oxygenation for the two dozen, 4-acre ponds at Little Cypress, but OceanBoy is looking for ways to reduce the cost of aeration. In addition to paddlewheels, the farm keeps a large supply of liquid oxygen on hand in case of emergencies like Hurricane Katrina. Fortunately, OceanBoy suffered only minimal problems when the storm crossed Florida before decimating the Gulf Coast.

In 2001, that facility had 14 one-hectare (2.47 acre) production ponds.

According to Michael Mogollon, the company’s vice president for production, those ponds are just the beginning.

The company has enough land at Little Cypress to build as many as 50 more ponds and there’s room for another 75 ponds on the company’s adjoining, 700-acre, Green Farm.

In all, Mogollon said, the company’s goal is to have 150 production ponds at Little Cypress-Green Farm, while the Labelle farm becomes primarily an R&D facility.

Unique hatchery

Little Cypress is the heart of OceanBoy’s operation.

In addition to the production ponds, organized in three groups of eight with their related wastewater treatment systems, the farm is also the site of the company’s rapidly expanding hatchery that produces all of the post larval shrimp (PLs) that stock the ponds.

OceanBoy claims that it is the only commercial marine shrimp hatchery in the world that is located inland.
Eddy Daniel (right), who oversees operations in OceanBoy’s processing plant, hosts Sort-Rite International chairman William Capt (center) who shows one of his company’s state-of-the-art grading machines to a potential customer from Saudi Arabia.Initially begun as a pilot project in 2003, the hatchery comprises a series of greenhouse structures located some distance away from the production facilities and accessible through a separate, gated entry with its own biosecurity station for disinfecting both entering vehicles and their occupants.

As further evidence of OceanBoy’s concerns for maintaining a disease-free environment, the gate that provides access from the highway to the farm property itself also has a similar biosecurity station.

The appearance of the greenhouse structures is deceptive.

Each external structure encloses an interior “shell” that allows the greenhouse to be specifically configured for a particular use, whether for spawning, maturation of larvae and PLs, or production of the vast quantities of algae needed to feed the maturing larvae during the first 5 days of their maturation.

Built in modular sections to allow for expansion, the hatchery houses the company’s selectively-bred, specific pathogen free (SPF) broodstock.

Those shrimp live, spawn, and their progeny mature, in tanks containing seawater that has been trucked in from deep wells at Nova Southeast University on the east coast of Florida and is treated in a closed loop, recirculating system that includes biofilter, sand filters, and diatomaceous earth filters.

According to Mogollon, the seawater currently in the hatchery has been in use for some 2 to 2-1/2 years.

A typical larval culture module (there are currently 3 hatchery modules in operation with a fourth under construction) includes, in addition to maturation tanks, 6 larval production tanks, a reservoir, and a harvest area.

Each tank has its own heater and oxygen bubbler, and the tanks are isolated to prevent possible contamination.

The recirculated, biofiltered seawater is kept hot, Mogollon said, to encourage rapid molting of the nauplii which reduces the likelihood of disease. Mogollon said the farm has been free of any viral disease for the past 4 years.

Into the nursery

After 18 days, the PLs are transferred to greenhouse-enclosed “raceways” where, over the course of 30 days, the PLs are acclimated to the low salinity (3 parts per thousand – about 1/12 the salinity of seawater) well water in which they will be grown to maturity.

After leaving the hatchery, post larval shrimp (PLs) are moved in full-strength seawater into raceways in greenhouses close to the production ponds. Over a period of a month, the salinity of the water will be reduced from 36 parts per thousand to ambient levels: 3 parts per thousand.
The PLs are stocked at a density of 1.5 million per raceway. During their time in the nursery raceways, the PLs are fed every three hours, and reach about 1/4 gram in weight before they are moved to the growout ponds.

It its first year of operation, Mogollon said, the hatchery was able to produce about 3 million PLs per month. Today, each module can produce 10-12 million PLs monthly.

The hatchery gears up to begin production in September and operates through late spring. Its most active periods are in January and again in late spring.

With a goal of two harvests annually, one around the end of July, the second in December, the first juvenile shrimp are moved out into the raceways in February.

Growout in ponds

After a month, the PLs are moved to the ponds in the same water that they have been acclimated in. So that there is no disagreement, hatchery and farm staff participate jointly in arriving at an agreed count for each delivery.

“The hatchery manager has certain production goals,” said Mogollon, “and then the farm guy has certain goals in stocking.”

Ponds are stocked at a density of 85 PLs per meter, Mogollon said, and achieve a survival rate of 65%. That results in a yield of 10 tons per hectare per harvest cycle. The total production cycle is just a little longer than 4 months.

The big boy held by Mike Mogollon, above, could ultimately become part of the farm’s broodstock.
With an area of 4 acres, Mogollon continued, “A pond should produce 30,000-35,000 pounds per cycle. If everything goes like clockwork, we can get two crops a year.”
As successful as this production model has proved to be, OceanBoy has some changes in mind.

The current two-stage, post-hatchery production cycle will be expanded to include a third stage.

The plan calls to add an intermediate pond into which PLs will be moved from the raceways for a period of time before being moved out into the production ponds.

“That will allow us to stock with larger shrimp and will result in larger shrimp at harvest,” said Mogollon.

Currently, OceanBoy harvests mostly medium-large shrimp in the 41-50 and 31-40 count range. That’s the ideal size, Mogollon said, because that’s the size the farm’s customers want.

“Everyone always wants bigger shrimp, but bigger isn’t always more profitable,” Mogollon said. “We try to give the clients what they want and maximize the output of the farm.”

Efficiency is key

The effort to maximize output is evident everywhere.

The company is experimenting with achieving a third harvest, utilizing greenhouse production.

In addition, the operation at Little Cypress is highly mechanized.

Although the farm is staffed 24/7, it operates with a staff of just 11, including managers, and one person is able to feed all 24 production ponds 4 times daily using a mobile feed blower. The hatchery has a staff of 13, while the Labelle facility operates with 9 on the roster. And, the company has a lean executive and administrative staff.

According to Little Cypress farm director Erik DeMicco, about the only labor-intensive part of the operation is in the processing plant. There, as many as 150 part time workers may be employed deheading and processing shrimp at the height of the harvest.

Part of what makes OceanBoy’s operations distinctive is what Mogollon calls its “cookie cutter” production pond design – sort of an expansion of its modular hatchery.

Production is organized around 4-pond “quads” that are connected to a central harvest drain and that share a water treatment system with another quad. Each of the 3 groups of 8 ponds is supplied with water from a 1,000' deep well, and an extra well is available in case of emergencies.

Each fully lined, 6-million-gallon pond has a central drain through which water containing undigested solids is removed into the waste water treatment system involving a settling canal and settling ponds.

According to Mogollon, at maximum loads, about 1% of the water from each pond is sent to the treatment ponds and then returned to the production ponds on a daily basis in a “batch recirculation” process that results in zero discharge.

In keeping with the company’s goal to increase production efficiencies, Mogollon said, it is looking at ways to replace the paddlewheels that provide most of the aeration for the production ponds.

As the farm grows, he said, the cost of the electricity required to drive an ever increasing number of paddlewheels becomes prohibitive.

Although OceanBoy is growing rapidly, the company hasn’t lost sight of what COO Walton said was the vision of its founders.

Indeed, he said, that vision remains central to everything the company does.

“The environment and business – not only can they go hand in hand, it’s imperative that they do so.”

That’s a credo that the aquaculture industry as a whole might want to consider.