WORLD AQUACULTURE 21 So began a long list of challenges for a young Burmese woman trying to set up a business in Thailand, not the least of which was that she did not know anyone in town. However, she persisted and, in doing so, revealed the qualities that captivated the attention of the audience in that Las Vegas conference room. The rest of this article is in Noe Noe’s words from her presentation. Reasons I am Interested in Aquaculture I found aquaculture very interesting because we are producing food and that is a top priority. There are so many roles to play in aquaculture and you must have a variety of skills to be successful, such as technical and financial management as well as finding markets. My other priority is that I want to create jobs for people. My main interest has been in crab farming. I took the crab seed production course from SEAFDEC in the Philippines and then decided to set up my own soft-shell crab farm. It took me two to three months to find a suitable farm and I didn’t have any friends or family in that part of Thailand where the farm was located. It was very hard for a young Burmese woman who wanted to be a crab farmer. Most Thai landowners could not believe that I wanted to set up a softshell crab farm. Why Soft-shell Crab Farming? The most lucrative market for crab farmers is the production of soft-shell crabs, which are held in individual cages and examined every four hours for molting. Within four hours of molting, the crabs must be moved from saltwater to freshwater to keep the new shell soft. The crabs are collected from the wild by fishermen and sold to farmers. The crabs must be individually tied to prevent them from crushing one another with their (CONTINUED ON PAGE 22) powerful claws, then sorted, untied, placed in individual cages consisting of plastic boxes with holes and fed every other day with small forage fish. The farm I rent had been an old shrimp pond and allowed to run down by the previous owner. I had to put in many long hours and cash to bring it back into production. The secret to success in crab farming is tender loving care. Because we are dealing with live animals, it is important to care about each animal even though there are so many. While farming, I was also still doing my aquaculture supply business in Myanmar to provide extra cash to keep the farm growing. As the farm yield has grown, I have looked for other opportunities to generate short-term business. At first this meant buying and selling live horseshoe crabs. After I trained staff and developed a regular market, I decided to diversify with other crab products, including live horseshoe crabs, live mud crabs, crab meat, spanner crabs, frozen soft-shell mud cabs and eventually live groupers. Later, I bought my neighbor’s ponds and started another farm to polyculture red tilapia and white shrimp, and more soft-shell crab. At the same time, I started giving a training course to farmers who wanted to start their own soft-shell crab farms and was invited to give presentations about soft-shell mud crab farming at professional conferences. Moreover, I volunteered for Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF) and the AquaFish Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP). In 2009, I co-authored a manual on soft-shell mud crab farming with a SEAFDEC mentor, which was published by SEAFDEC.4 Packing mud crab for market. Harvesting red tilapia from polyculture pond. Mussel meats going to market.
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