April 20, 2016

The powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Ecuador on Saturday night (April 16) damaged several thousand hectares of shrimp farms, according to farm operators.

In their initial assessments sent by email to Shrimp News International, the shrimp farmers said the damage wrought by the tremor, which killed at least 507 as of April 19, was not considerable.

"We don't expect a major disruption to the shrimp farming industry", said Sandro Coglitore, CEO of shrimp farmer and processor Omarsa S.A.

He said the affected provinces of Manabi and Esmeraldas host around 30,000 hectares of shrimp ponds and that some farms lost their crops when their water control structures collapsed. "Other farms lost their pumping stations, so they will have to do emergency harvests", he added.  

Coglitore said the farms might lose 10-15% of their production for one or two cycles.

In Pedernales canton in Manabi,more than 6,500 hectares of shrimp ponds were estimated to have been damaged "to some degree", according to José Antonio Camposano, executive president of the National Chamber of Aquaculture. Pedernales accounts for almost 10% of Ecuador's total shrimp output.

John Birkett, a shrimp farm manager, said: "Apart from the collapse of a few walls, the spilling of some larval tanks and the cracking of old buildings, there's not been much damage to shrimp farms and hatcheries". 

Ecuador is one of the top shrimp producers in the world and is currently the third-largest shrimp exporter to the US. The industry, however, has been hampered by disease outbreaks.-Rick Alberto