by
DR. C. P. IDYLL
Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Miami
Chairman of the Conference
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is appropriate at this point to look back at our World Scientific Conference on the Biology and Culture of Shrimps and Prawns and examine what we have accomplished. Many people from over 30 countries have come to the handsome capital of Mexico for our conference, some of them from half way round the world. Many people have worked long hours, sometimes neglecting other urgent matters, in order to make the conference useful and pleasant. The Government of Mexico, the FAO, and other organizations have spent a great deal of money on the organization and conduct of our conference.
Has it been worthwhile to put this time, effort, thought and money into the conference?
I believe it has. I believe that substantial immediate benefits have been achieved, but I also believe that these are small compared to greater gains which we will reap in the future from our World Shrimp Conference.
It seems to me that the chief benefits of this conference, both short and long-term, can be summarized in the phrase “Improved communications”.
There have been many attempts to explain why man is the dominant animal of our planet. His upright stance, which released his hands for useful work, is among the factors leading to success, as is the possession of an apposable thumb and an enlarged fore-brain. But of course it is the successful use of these attributes that has led to man's dominance, and in my view it is the development of systems of communication which has led him farthest. And the more extensive and useful a system of communication we develop, the quicker will we achieve harmony among men and understanding of the processes which control us and our environment.
This is the essence of our World Shrimp Conference. This is why we have taken the trouble to come here -- to increase and improve our communication. I believe we have succeeded to a significant degree.
I invite you to consider what would be the nature of our lives if we were forced to act individually instead of collectively. And to act collectively, we must communicate. Of the activities of man, science is one which leans very heavily on communications. We build on each other's accomplishments; we are stimulated by each other's ideas. I believe that all of us, without exception, go from this meeting with our lines of communication improved. We have learned of work which illuminates and stimulates our own research; we have met and talked to colleagues who were only coldly printed names before, but are now flesh-and-blood friends to whom we can write with certainty of sympathetic response. In these and other ways, direct and subtle, our communication has been improved. And this could not have been accomplished except by meeting together.
If we were forced to sit at our desks and list the problems of mankind which have been solved at this meeting, we might be hard pressed. I think there have been some, including progress in attaining agreement on the standard manner of reporting statistics of landings; progress toward clarification of the definitions of some of the life stages of shrimps; progress in compiling a more complete, more accurate, list of shrimps and prawns; progress in our understanding of culture of shrimps and the place of this technique in increasing the world food supply.
The manner that I have presented these examples is important. We have made progress toward the solution of the problem of the culture of shrimp; progress in the definition of life stages and progress in a number of other matters.
But in no case have we solved a problem forever. Sometimes we are inclined to think in terms of absolute solutions, forgetting that the truth we pursue is in fact unattainable. In few human activities - perhaps in none - are we able to produce complete solutions, acceptable and useful to everyone. Our hope is only that we can accumulate a sufficient understanding of natural processes that we can gradually learn to manipulate our environment to our advantage.
Hence we will look in vain at this conference for many accomplishments in the sense that we have solved that problem and can put it away forever.
But in an impressive number of instances we have pushed knowledge forward to one degree or another. We have new information about shrimps and prawns - new facts, new procedures, new tools, new ideas. Especially new ideas. These are the life blood of science.
One thing that I personally have gained from this conference is a realization that as a shrimp biologist I am a part of a global organization, working earnestly toward a better understanding of one important group of animals, and of a better knowledge of their reaction to their environment. The parts of this organization are loosely connected, or in some cases without connection to the whole. It is clear to me that we must improve the welding together of these parts. I am by no means suggesting that all shrimp work should be coordinated by some super-body, but I am saying that the better we understand each other's aspirations, successes and failures, the closer we will come to our particular truth.
Many of us at this conference have been heartened to realize that other scientists also have problems - sometimes, unbelievably, even worse than ours. It is encouraging to find that we have solved difficulties that others still struggle to overcome. It is helpful to find, by contrast, that someone has the solution - ridiculously simple really - to a problem that has baffled us.
What roads ahead has this conference pointed out for us?
It seems to me that the conference has been of great value in revealing more clearly where the greatest gaps were in our knowledge of shrimps and prawns. Many of us have been painfully aware of some of these, but other problems have escaped our notice. Problem-solving must always be preceded by problem definition, and we are all much better aware of these now than we were two weeks ago.
It is clear that such basic things as taxonomy need attention. This is not news to any of us, but at our conference much better focus has been possible on the specific areas where taxonomic research is required. We have had our attention called to the surprising lack of knowledge of parasitology and diseases of shrimp, and the discussions have made it clearer that these may be of fundamental importance in understanding fluctuations in abundance, and in culture methods on a commercial basis.
You must all have been impressed, as I was, with the repeated complaints that we know so little of the ecology of shrimp. We do not understand the effect of the environment on survival or movement of the young stages, and this seriously affects our understanding of variation in recruitment. The conference has made it plain that we are equally ignorant of quantitative measures of environment pressures on adults, and this affects our ability to catch them, and to assess changes in stock size and its variation.
Summary reports of sessions have stated that for no population of shrimps and prawns do we understand the population dynamics well - the way in which the population reacts to fishing and other pressures. Indeed, only on a very few species do we have even a partial understanding of this important and complex matter. And yet we will not be able to decide whether any stock is being overfished, nor when and how to apply rational regulations, until we do have this knowledge. Reports of the sessions and the discussions are full of phrases such as “inadequate growth rate data”, “sparse data on mortality rates”, “age composition data are lacking”, “predation rates are unknown”.
We need more research on tagging and marking. We need studies of feeding efficiency and food preferences. We need information on the schooling habits of shrimps and prawns. We need improved methods of resource appraisal. There are, as one report puts it, “Vast lacunae in our knowledge of physiology and behaviour” -- the kind of knowledge required in the more efficient capture of shrimp and to improve our culture methods.
Thus we are painfully aware of the lack of knowledge in many areas of research, and of the need for better techniques. But we are encouraged by the progress reported at this conference in analyzing data by sophisticated biochemical, mathematical and computer techniques. The complicated problems of estimating survival rates, predation rates, growth rates and other problems are still only partially solved, but these look easier as a result of work discussed here.
One of the dominating interests of the conference has been in shrimp culture. Over the world, both among oceanographers and the general public, enthusiasm runs high over the possibility of increasing our food supply through aquatic forms. I am afraid popular enthusiasm is greater than professional enthusiasm in this area and that, through ignorance of the problems, the layman expects more than can be delivered. It is my opinion that marine farming on a large scale is many years in the future, and that it never will replace or even compete with the capture of wild stocks in terms of quantities of food produced. And yet, marine brackish water farms will exist in the future, and they will produce useful quantities of food. Furthermore, I believe that shrimp farms will be among the first successful of such establishments. Indeed, this is already the case, our Oriental colleagues having shown us the way. The nature of the shrimp - high value, fast-growing animals living near the base of the food chain, or in a dominant position in the food web, to use a more appropriate simile - makes them good material for our first awkward attempts at this highly complicated and difficult job. I am hopeful that we can soon learn so much from trials at shrimp culture that we will be able to establish farms for many other marine animals, invertebrate and vertebrate.
The key to this problem, as with most of those we face eventually, is an economic one. We can already produce shrimp and some other animals in tanks and ponds. The trick is to produce them at a profit. This looks either difficult or impossible - depending on the species and the particular economy - from where we sit today but I predict that we will succeed in this endeavour, probably faster than most of us think. And our meeting here has pushed us forward on this important road. We must assemble again in not too many years to urge it still farther forward.
We must not lose the momentum that this conference has created. We must continue the associations we have established. All of us will do this on a personal basis, but in addition, there must be some official machinery, through FAO, to sustain our forward motion. To this end the conference has created several working parties, concerned with statistics, with taxonomy of shrimps, with classification and definition of young stages and with other matters. We have suggested to FAO that they examine how best to maintain formal liaison among shrimp scientists over the world, and we will be eager to see that this develops quickly and effectively.
I took the occasion last night to point out the gratitude all of us have to those who have worked so hard to organize and run this conference. Without repeating names I will say again how grateful we are to the staff of the FAO, to the Convenors and Rapporteurs who gave up technical sessions and entertainment to work on their reports; to members of the Consultative Committee who helped shape the conference and ensure its success; to the interpreters who did such a skillful job; to the cheerful and efficient helpers all down the line.
I cannot close without repeating thanks on my own behalf and on the part of every participant, whole-hearted and warm gratitude to our Mexican hosts for their extraordinary generosity and kindness. I expressed this at the dinner last night and what I said then I will not attempt to repeat, to avoid further damage to the beautiful Spanish language. But I have had scores of comments from the delegates expressing their amazement and pleasure at the brilliance of the social events and at the generosity of our Mexican hosts. I can only say again: “Thank you. Your efforts are deeply appreciated”.
