It is a beautiful morning on Bal Rumaid Island, a five-minute boat journey from Reem Island. The city’s skyscrapers are covered with fog and the crystal-clear water revives the spirit. Waiting on the dock is Dr S?D Gopakumar, the mastermind behind the UAE’s only prawn farm. Around him a crowd of greyish-green prawns swim in ponds. But how those prawns eventually end up on your plate is a far more complicated story than most people realise.
Launched as Al Jaraf Fisheries in 2004, the project at first struggled to meet its objective to supply the country with fresh prawns. When Dr Gopakumar arrived in 2005, there were only eight ponds. He developed techniques and introduced technology better suited to the local climate.
As a result, today there are 52 prawn ponds in Bal Rumaid Island. Some of the most-valued prawns on the farm are not intended for the barbecue. These are the mother prawns, also called bloodstock. Disease free, they produce all the other prawns on Bal Rumaid Island, and ensure they are fit to eat. “We do prawn farming on a commercial level,” says Dr Gopakumar, the chief operating officer. “We have our own mother shrimps.” Mother prawns are grown on the farm, removing the risk of introducing diseases from bloodstock that are brought in. Through careful management of its stock the farm has specific pathogen-free (SPF) mother prawns, meaning that, after strict screening and quarantine, they are guaranteed to be free of any disease-bearing microorganisms.
Preserving the farm’s SPF status starts with the selection of mother prawns, Dr Gopakumar explains. They are taken from their ponds to the hatchery, where the prawns are born. “There are different growing stages. It will be grown in the hatchery for 18 to 22 days,” he says. “The mother weighs around 40 grams.”
Walking past ponds of different sizes, Dr Gopakumar stops to politely ask one of the workers to demonstrate the different ways in which prawns are caught.
“There are two methods of catching: bottom-set netting and cast netting,” he says. The first is to spread half of a net on the surface while the rest sinks into the water. “You leave it for 20 to 30 minutes and you catch a huge amount,” he says. But at Al Jaraf Fisheries, Dr Gopakumar says: “If our customer places an order in the night, they get prawns delivered within three hours. The quality is maintained.”
* Photos by Staff Photographer Ravindranath K / Reporting by Asmaa Al Hameli