The interview is part of a new series filmed by The Fish Site’s team at dsm-firmenich’s recent Global Aqua Days event in Athens. In it Aranguren discusses the health challenges facing shrimp farmers in Latin America with The Fish Site’s Rob Fletcher.
As Aranguren noted: “The shrimp industry in Latin America is growing really, really well. Every year there is pretty much a record, at least in shrimp production.” Yet alongside this growth, disease remains the sector’s most pressing challenge.
The most significant threat is white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), which first appeared in the region in 1999, causing devastating losses in Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.
“Probably the major pathogen right now is white spot, which is a viral pathogen, and definitely it can cause a lot of impact on the shrimp industry,” Aranguren noted.
Unlike Asia, which employs an exclusionary strategy to prevent pathogen entry through the use of specific pathogen-free (SPF) shrimp, Latin America has adopted an inclusionary strategy – accepting that pathogens are endemic and selecting broodstock from farm survivors. Over generations, this has bred more robust animals, supporting steady growth even in the presence of WSSV.
Aranguren details how environmental factors, especially water temperature, heavily influence disease dynamics. Warmer conditions tend to suppress viral replication, favouring shrimp survival, while cooler waters increase WSSV’s lethality.
As Aranguren explains: “You can have all the animals infected with white spot, but if the water temperature is above 31–32 °C, you can have 100 percent survival. At 26–28°C, you have 0 percent survival.”
Events like El Niño, which elevate sea temperatures, are therefore paradoxically beneficial to shrimp farmers in terms of WSSV, but they also bring bacterial risks, with vibrio thriving, meaning that farmers are always vulnerable to one category of pathogen or another.
Beyond WSSV and Vibrio, microsporidian parasites such as Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei (EHP) are emerging concerns. First identified in Asia, similar microsporidia have been detected in Venezuela and Central America, associated with white faeces syndrome. Fortunately, according to Aranguren, Latin America’s lower stocking densities limit their impact.
Latin American producers rely on multiple strategies to manage disease. Biosecurity measures focus on stress reduction and breaking pathogen cycles through basic disinfection of eggs and larvae. Probiotics and pond bioremediation are also widely used to manage organic waste and microbial balance. Meanwhile, genetic selection continues to improve robustness against endemic pathogens.
The dsm-sponsored series also includes interviews with Gorjan Nikolik, senior seafood analyst at Rabobank; Brett Glencross, technical director of IFFO; and John Costatino, COO of Manolin; as well as dsm-firmenich’s Corinne Bonadei, Sebastain Rider and Benedict Standen.
