Farming Shrimp the Sustainable Way

It was a few years ago when Steve Sutton first began to realize he was part of an industry that needed changing. 

Working as a biologist with the federal government, Sutton was collecting data that was used to regulate fishing; in the United States, the industry is highly controlled. But when he learned that around 90% of seafood in the U.S. is imported, he recognized that he was working to protect only a small sliver of the fish and shellfish that end up on our plates.

“I just realized that was not going to be changing fast enough for the changing world and the damage that we're doing,” Sutton says. 

Clearly, he says, the U.S. needed to find a way to catch or create more seafood. So he set off on a mission to better understand aquaculture by traveling the world, spending the next couple of years in places like Miami and Thailand, Central America and South America. 

As he dove into the intricacies and methods of fish farming, the many issues facing the industry became clear to him. Not only does seafood farming contribute to social injustices and modern-day slavery, Sutton says, but it’s also environmentally unsustainable.

Its damage to mangrove forests, which make up crucial wetland ecosystems, is a prime example, he says. They sequester more than double the amount of carbon as tropical rainforests, but they have been reduced by over 50% since 1980, largely due to shrimp farming. Wild shrimping is hardly better — on average, it kills six pounds of other sea life to get just one pound of shrimp, Sutton says.

With this knowledge in hand, he decided  to try to make a difference, and in 2018, he began raising funds for his own indoor shrimp farm. 

“The grand mission is to convert some percentage of shrimp farming back to indoor farming, or farming at least on land that's not productive,” he says.

He quickly acquired a former seafood processing facility in Long Beach, but he lost the property, as well as several investments, during the pandemic. Forced to start from scratch, Sutton eventually settled on a warehouse in Downey. 

TransparentSea Farm officially opened in late 2020. Since then, the company has used first-of-its-kind technology to continuously strive toward its sustainability goals. For instance, the farm recycles nearly all of its water (99.7% of water at the farm is now recycled, up from 95% in 2020) and takes up at least 100 times less space than traditional farms.

“We're basically recreating the ocean,” Sutton says. “We're just letting nature do what it does.”

While typical shrimp may have traveled anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 miles by the time it reaches customers, according to Sutton, TransparentSea shrimp generally only travels 20 to 30 miles. The company sells primarily to chefs at local restaurants and at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market.

“Building one mega-farm in the middle of nowhere, and then shipping to New York and shipping to Canada … we kind of start to repeat the same sins that got us into this mess,” he says. 

On average, most grocery store shrimp has switched hands seven or eight times, and in some cases, as many as 12 times, Sutton explains. Along the way, it’s likely been frozen, thawed, and treated, meaning it may have been coated in chemicals or salt baths. 

Because the volume of shrimp imported into the U.S. is so high, it’s barely inspected. Still, as much as 15% of the shrimp that actually does get inspected is rejected for banned substances, typically antibiotics or pesticides, Sutton says. 

At TransparentSea Farm, on the other hand, shrimp comes out of the tank and ends up on your plate in just 24 hours. All shrimp are chemical-free, with no preservatives, additives, or antibiotics added during processing. The shellfish have a firm texture and clean flavor with a slightly sweet finish, Sutton says.

As climate issues across the world are beginning to escalate, leading to unpredictable weather and an increase of disease, the need to improve shrimp farming practices is even more pressing, Sutton says. He is currently working on forging partnerships so that he can help other farmers start their own sustainable indoor farms.

And by continuing to streamline and improve the technology at TransparentSea, Sutton hopes to make the farm both a more economically sustainable model and a more accessible product. TransparentSea prawns currently range from $20 to $30 a pound, depending on their size.

“I don't really just want to be a farmer that farms for rich people. That's not the end goal,” Sutton says. “If that's all we'll do, we're not really going to change the world.”

Over the past few years, production has steadily increased, and TransparentSea now produces about 1,000 pounds of shrimp a week. But without a hatchery onsite, production is inconsistent, Sutton explains.

“This week, I have to tell my customers that they’re too small, we need to wait a week,” he says. “That's just not ever going to be a business that, at least in Los Angeles, can make enough money consistently enough to keep your bills paid.”

Nonetheless, Sutton has proven that he has a product people want.

“We brought dry chilled oxygenated shrimp in a bag with a special type of wood chips to Japanese sushi distributors, and they all came running out of their offices with their phones,” Sutton says. “I won’t say everything we’ve touched turns to gold, but almost every avenue I’ve tried has promise.

“We've shown that there's a lot of people hungry for more stuff like this and more of our products,” he continues. “So I think we owe it to the mission and ourselves to take the next step.”

And the next stage for TransparentSea is a new facility in the San Diego area, which Sutton hopes to open in the next year or so. He expects it will be able to produce about five times as much at around half the cost, thanks to its larger design and ability to house its own hatchery. 

“We've really proven that if we had a hatchery, automated processing, and a lot more space to grow, we'd find out how big this movement toward a truly sustainable [business] is,” Sutton says. 

Also within the next couple of years, Sutton hopes to introduce a soup and stock product made from the shrimp heads and shells, moving TransparentSea even closer to being a zero-waste company. 

To Sutton, being truly sustainable means employing practices that can be followed in perpetuity, without causing harm to people or the environment.

“In the next five years, we want to start to become more of a household name in at least seafood, in Southern California,” Sutton says. “I think we owe it to the planet to try.”

Find out more about TransparentSea Farm at transparentseafarm.com.