易胜博官网

On Saturday, June 13, a marine biologist and media technologist from 易胜博官网 Cooperative Extension will board a plane in Boston and fly 21 hours to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in Vietnam.

Their stay will last a single week and include visits to the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture as well as a host of shrimp hatcheries and farms in Vietnam鈥檚 Dong Nai, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, and Soc Trang provinces. Their mission: to equip Southeast Asian shrimp farmers with the educational tools they need to combat a deadly virus that has decimated a billion dollar industry in this region. When they return, they鈥檒l have just several weeks in which to deliver a curriculum that will forever change the way shrimp farming is done not only in Southeast Asia but also in many other parts of the world.

Flashback to 2009. A new shrimp disease has begun to cause significant production losses in southern China.听Within three years, shrimp farmers in Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand report crop losses of up to 90 percent. The听听(RAF), the Portsmouth-based educational arm of the听听(GAA), the industry鈥檚 leading certifying agency, undertakes a case study to analyze the crisis in Vietnam. Funded by the World Bank, the RAF team visits hatcheries, farms and research facilities throughout Vietnam.

They think they uncover the culprit. 鈥淭he RAF team discovered a bacterial agent that produces a toxin in shrimp that destroys their digestive systems,鈥� says Mike Chambers, the globe-trotting marine biologist with Extension and N.H. Sea Grant. 鈥淭he causative agent was determined to be the unique strains of the bacterium听Vibrio parahaemolyticus. And the disease was named Early Mortality Syndrome, or EMS.鈥澨�

Emily Stavis, the import manager at Stavis Seafoods in Boston, whose company supplies many 易胜博官网 businesses, says of EMS, 鈥淚t wrecks havoc on supply worldwide and sends commodities either skyrocketing or plummeting. The importers, processors and farmers much prefer a steady price听鈥斕齩ne that gives everyone a bit of profit and keeps shrimp selling to the final consumer.鈥�

Chambers says the small, low-intensity shrimp farms typical of Vietnam have proven fertile breeding grounds for EMS. And the region鈥檚 lack of coordinated information sharing and crisis response infrastructure has made recovery impossible.

Fixing a problem as systemic as this one requires a holistic approach 鈥� one that includes improved controls for breeding, hatchery, farm and feed, as well as effective coordinated area management. It also requires the talent to deliver training to a host of practitioners 鈥� factory and pond workers, supervisors, inspection staff, others 鈥� and to do so quickly and in Vietnamese.

Enter Wally Stevens and 易胜博官网. President of RAF and executive director of GAA, Stevens began his career听in the seafood industry more than 44 years ago.听He has held leadership positions in large, publicly traded corporations, small startup salmon farming operations, and with mid-sized family-owned companies.听He鈥檚 the ultimate industry insider.

He鈥檚 also a member of the University System of 易胜博官网 board of trustees, so when he thought about where RAF might contract the production of such educational materials, he thought instantly of 易胜博官网 鈥� and, in particular, Cooperative Extension.

鈥淚t鈥檚 one thing for us to think we understand EMS and another to get the research out into the field and educate farmers in the field to mitigate the problem and find out if we鈥檙e right,鈥� avers Stevens. In short order, he and Extension dean and director Ken La Valley came together. La Valley assembled an interdisciplinary team made up of Chambers, Faye Cragin, Extension鈥檚 distance education and media technologist, and Ken Mitchell, instructional designer at 易胜博官网 Academic Technology.

Their deliverable, six web-based training modules that will be interactive and portable, will contribute to the lofty goal of creating 鈥渁 global community of practitioners鈥� to share experiences, learning, and best-practice training for shrimp farming. 鈥淭he online platform must be scalable in the sense that it meet the diverse needs of people with different educations, languages, devices and access to the Internet,鈥� says Mitchell.

The team remains cautiously optimistic about the project. 鈥淲e have not found any silver bullets for EMS,鈥� Stevens says. 鈥淭here are a multitude of activities that farmers can do to mitigate losses and we need to look at them all.鈥�

Follow the 易胜博官网 team鈥檚听.