(5 of 5)
The main problems facing aqua-farmers are economic rather than technological. The University of Miami, for instance, manages to grow some 13 million baby shrimp a year in experimental ponds. But it takes 4 lbs. of expensive feed (soybean and fish meal, vitamins and mixed grain) to produce a single pound of cleaned shrimp, and the cost comes to over $3 per lb. That is hardly the answer to feeding the world's hungry, admits Miami Marine Biologist George Krantz. Other scientists argue that more emphasis should be placed on the harvesting and preparing of plankton, the protein-rich microscopic organisms on which both shrimp and whales feed. That should be another challenge for technology. By one estimate, a plant would have to process more than 260 million gal. of sea water just to produce a ton of plankton.