Science in Hawaii, an industry in Thailand

09 November 2026

Part 3 of 17 · A history of the giant freshwater prawn

Hawaii’s biggest prawn farm never made a profit.[1]

It was the Lowe Aquafarm, later Amorient Aquafarms: 150 acres by 1983, harvesting around 80 tonnes of prawns a year. In 1985, with output falling, it was reported that the farm had never made a profit. Its owners put it up for sale and went to farm marine shrimp in Ecuador instead.[1]

Hawaii had everything science could supply: the hatchery that had cracked mass production, free postlarvae for farmers, at least 24 farms by 1980, and the attention of the aquaculture press.[1] What it lacked, as Michael New of FAO put it, science could not supply: abundant sites, cheap labour, and a large home market already used to eating freshwater prawns.[1]

Thailand had all three, and an appetite to go with it. A prawn fishery ran in all its major rivers, and by the mid-1970s Thailand was exporting freshwater prawns to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, the United States, Italy and France.[2] Even in 1983, with farms spreading fast, it still imported 700 tonnes of prawns a year, mostly from Burma.[1] The farming grew out of a fisheries station at Chachoengsao, led by Somsak Singholka, and, from 1978, a UNDP/FAO project. Together they spread prawn farming to 40 of the country’s 72 provinces by 1980, and a study that year found it profitable at every size of farm examined.[1] By 1987, a third of Thailand’s farmed prawns went to Europe.[1]

Hawaii had the science. Thailand had the customers.

The American mainland ran the same experiment with even more enthusiasm: seasonal pond farms across the South, geothermal farms in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and California, solar-heated recirculating systems in Rhode Island. Commercial production stayed, in New’s word, minimal.[1] Decades later, Louis D’Abramo of the University of Alabama at Birmingham described American prawn farming as a paradox: fifty years of research advances, and a species still “emerging”.[3]

In Taiwan, meanwhile, prawn farmers had found customers nobody had planned for: people who wanted to catch the prawns themselves.[4]

Sources

1. New, M. B. (1987), Freshwater prawns: status of global aquaculture. FAO. The Lowe/Amorient farm; Hawaii’s farms, hatchery and press; what Hawaii lacked; Thailand’s station, project, provinces, profitability, imports and exports; the US mainland. fao.org
2. Singholka, S., New, M. B., Vorasayan, P., The status of Macrobrachium farming in Thailand. FAO. River fishery; exports by the mid-1970s (citing Rabanal, 1975). fao.org
3. D’Abramo, L. R., Paradox of freshwater prawn farming in the United States: noteworthy research advances and commercial success, but still an “emerging” aquaculture species. World Aquaculture Society, abstract. was.org
4. AmCham Taiwan, Taiwan Business TOPICS (2022), How Taiwan became a haven for recreational prawn fishing. topics.amcham.com.tw

Part 3 of 17 · A history of the giant freshwater prawn · Previous: Part 2, The hatchery that gave its prawns away · Next: Part 4, The prawn you catch yourself · SHRMP.bio’s strategy behind it: shrmp.bio/strategy.html