With the improvement of cold chain transportation, even consumers in inland areas can now easily eat seafood in coastal areas, of which shrimp may be one of the most popular seafood.
In the past two years, there is a giant shrimp that stands out from seafood, that is, black tiger shrimp, you can often see the relevant information of black tiger shrimp on the Internet, which can be summarized in two points - this shrimp is large and expensive, and the normal size of farmed black tiger shrimp is in the early 100 yuan per kilogram, and those who are huge and claim to be caught by sea have reached several hundred yuan a pound.
Many people think that the main reason why black tiger shrimp is more expensive is that they are imported.
Black tiger shrimp, source: swissmerchants
In fact, the probability of buying imported black tiger shrimp is indeed very high, but this does not mean that this shrimp is "foreign goods", it is actually a native species in the southern waters of China.
And black tiger shrimp is not a rare seafood, it is one of the most common farmed shrimp species in the world, from the current production, it should be ranked second, second only to white shrimp.
So the question is, since it is a native shrimp in China, and it is widely farmed, why do many people not understand this shrimp, and they are imported and so expensive?
About black tiger shrimp
The scientific name of the black tiger shrimp is called penaeus monodon, and the shrimp called shrimp is often the larger shrimp, and the shrimp is the largest shrimp in the world.
They are relatively widely distributed, from the waters of southern Japan to The australian seas, but the most distributed in natural habitats is in Southeast Asia.
Female penaeus segments can grow to about 33 cm and weigh more than 300 g, while males are slightly smaller, and the general body size can grow to about 25 cm and weigh more than 170 g.
It is believed that the largest fished in the wild is more than 50 centimeters, weighing more than 500 grams, such a large shrimp, ordinary people are estimated to eat a tube full.
In the wild, the larvae of Penaeus monodon usually live in sandy estuaries and then move further and further into the deep sea as they grow, up to 110 metres deep.
Penaeus monodon has a wide range of food sources, and they basically eat organic debris in the ocean, and they also prey on polychaetic worms, molluscs and small crustaceans.
Although marine algae are also on their menus, Penaeus monodon is generally considered carnivorous because they cannot eat fresh ephemeral plants.
In addition, they are nocturnal animals, they dig burrows during the day, forage and mate at night, and their reproductive ability is very strong, and the penaeus monodon in southern China can breed twice a year - February-April and August-November, and can lay 800,000 eggs at a time.
In fact, from our previous introduction, it is not difficult to see that Penaeus monodon is a very good breed, because they adapt to a wide range of water temperatures from south to north, from the estuary to the deep sea at the same time can adapt to various salinities, and then the food requirements are not high, the reproductive ability is still strong, and the most important thing is that they grow fast and large.
Therefore, Penaeus monodon is one of the first species to become a cultured species in the shrimp farming industry, and they have been cultivated for at least 100 years.
Cultivation of black tiger shrimp
With the increasing development of the ocean, the large shrimp that lives in the estuary (offshore) of the shrimp is actually difficult to catch for a long time, so it is basically farmed.
At the end of the 20th century, the main source of income for farmers in Taiwan was Penaeus monodon.
Although the coastal countries of Southeast Asia at that time - Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. were all cultivating Penaeus monodon, Taiwan was definitely the region with the largest export volume at that time.
Image source: CSIRO
Of course, except for Taiwan, many places along the coast of China have farmed this shrimp, but their name is not Penaeus macrodon, nor is it called black tiger shrimp.
The name of the black tiger shrimp actually comes from Vietnam and Thailand, and I think this name is suspected of creating a good imported goods - so that consumers do not know that it is originally in China.
In China, there are many previous names for penaeus monodon, including ghost shrimp, grass shrimp, flower shrimp, cattle-shaped shrimp, and one of the most famous names, directly named after the shape of penaeus monodon - nine-section shrimp.
It may be because the name has changed, so many people do not understand the black tiger shrimp, thinking that it is an imported good product.
As a Hokkien speaker who grew up in a coastal area, when I saw a picture of a black tiger shrimp when I wrote this article, I thought of the nine-section shrimp I had seen when I was a child, because the two were almost the same in appearance.
Then, I carefully reviewed the information, these two kinds of shrimp are indeed penneusons, but I don't know why, now many people distinguish between the nine shrimp and the black tiger shrimp.
In fact, many places in foreign countries now call the black tiger shrimp "Gao Chap Hei", which is the name of the Hokkien dialect transliteration of the past, perhaps because the export volume of Taiwan's shrimp was the largest in the past.
If the black tiger shrimp is called its Chinese name, any of the above mentioned ones, it is estimated that many friends in the southern coastal areas will not be unfamiliar.
So, there is another question, why is there farming in China, and the black tiger shrimp bought now is mainly imported?
Black tiger shrimp is also not very easy to keep
In the past two years, because of the rise of black tiger shrimp, domestic farmers have slowly increased, but in fact, in the past for a long time, no one has farmed penneuson.
The data available now show that Taiwan began to be truly commercially farmed in the early 1970s, while the mainland began in the 1980s.
However, in 1987-1988, an outbreak of viral diseases swept through China's shrimp farming industry, and many farmers lost their money.
I saw a blogger who introduced black tiger shrimp that said that his relatives were laid off in the 80s when there was a problem farming black tiger shrimp, presumably because of the disease outbreak.
The black tiger shrimp we import now mainly comes from Vietnam and Thailand, which quickly occupied the export market when Taiwan's production declined in 1988.
Of course, after the outbreak of the virus, China also invested a lot of energy to study and breed this shrimp, but basically failed, after 1996, basically no farmers dared to raise it.
We have kept less of our own, and we are becoming strangers to it, but Vietnam and Thailand have taken a fancy to the Chinese market and packaged shrimp as "black tiger shrimp" for export to us, and the price is called a high.
Looking back, black tiger shrimp and New Zealand kiwifruit have many similarities, many people think that domestic kiwifruit is small and tastes bad, and imported kiwifruit is a good thing.
The same is true for penneus prawns, many people just think that the nine-knot shrimp is small and has a poor taste, while the black tiger shrimp is very tall.
In fact, they are all one thing, but the packaging is advertised differently.
At last
Almost all seafood is the same, the larger the more expensive, the larger the shrimp is, the largest shrimp, it is understandable that it is more expensive.
However, changing the name will sell many times higher, and it is still a frozen shrimp that is not fresh, which is not very reasonable. As consumers, when we buy, we must polish our eyes.