Mapping, technical and environmental aspects of shrimp farms in the Acaraú River Estuary, Ceará State, Brazil

Abstract

Despite the economic importance of shrimp farming, a number of technical problems have been widely reported in the literature. This article focuses on the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of semi-intensive/intensive shrimp farming in the Acarau river estuary. This estuary has the second largest number of farms in the Ceara state. Currently, the industry has 31 participating farms with a total area devoted to shrimp farming of 1,571.58 ha. In 2013, total production was 7,853.92 tons of shrimp with an average yield of 5.88 t ha-1 year-1 in an earth pond area of 1,335.49 ha. This industry employs 1,382 people, representing 17.3% of the jobs generated in the two municipalities where the Acarau river estuary is located. The main environmental impacts of this industry are water pollution and loss of mangroves. However, no changes in water quality parameters were observed during the period 2011-2013, indicating that this estuary has some nutrient processing capacity derived from nurseries, while 159.4 ha of mangrove forests were occupied by In the same period of the establishment of the farms, this estuary presented an increase of 987.41 ha of this landscape unit. The results of this research demonstrate that the Brazilian shrimp industry requires an improvement in management practices to achieve sustainable growth.