The marine aquarium fishermen of Les village, North Bali, have been testing the seafarming of ornamental shrimp in their marine areas since July 2010. With the help of LINI, artificial ‘shrimp habitats’ made from cement, and resembling pods, (which then we call them ‘shrimp pods’), were installed at the depths of 15 meters.

There are three species of ornamental shrimps targeted for the marine aquarium trade. They are cleaner shrimp such as ‘White-banded Cleaner Shrimp’ (Lysmata amboinensis), ‘Camel Shrimp (Rhynchocinetes spp) and ‘Shrimp Banded' (Stenopus hispidus). The first species (White-banded Cleaner Shrimp’) is the most sought-after by hobbyists, and can fetch 7000 (USD 0.80) rupiah per specimen.

Fishermen collect the broodstocks of the shrimp ‘udang pelet’ from surrounding reefs, to be released among the artificial shrimp pods. From the monitoring of the shrimp pods, 4 species of shrimp were identified that were occupying the pods in the first two months. These are pelet, wayang, MP and udang air.To date, around 500 ornamental shrimp, mainly Camel Shrimp, have been harvested from the pods.

One problem encountered when first using the shrimp pods was the pradation of shrimp by various fish species, including Spotted Hawkfish (Cirrhitichthys aprinus) or Kerapu Tokek in Bahasa Indonesia. To overcome this predation problem, the pods have been modified and are ready to be tested. The plan is to install these modified pods in late March 2011