Make way for 'Hipon 911' ambulance for white shrimps

DAGUPAN CITY – Make way for “Hipon 911,” an ambulance basically for white shrimps called Penaeus vannamei.

A first in the country, the Hipon 911 has a licensed veterinarian and four other personnel of the Department of Agriculture and Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).

Dr. Westly Rosario, BFAR center chief in Barangay Bonuan Binloc this city and executive director of the National Fisheries Research Development Institute (NFRDI), told The STAR that they launched the project here as part of last week’s opening of the P4-million Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory.

The NFRDI-Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory was established to support the growing P. vannamei industry in the country, as white shrimps are now considered the third most important species next to bangus and tilapia.

Rosario said the mobile clinic provides pro-active monitoring of the presence of shrimp diseases, particularly that affecting P. vannamei, in hatcheries and grow-out farms.

It will also provide immediate transport of samples from infected farms to the NFRDI-Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory.

“It’s a pro-active strategy so that entry and incidence of shrimp diseases could be prevented,” he said.

The Hipon 911’s five-man team will identify and recommend appropriate interventions to prevent disease outbreaks and minimize their impact, Rosario said.

Like any functional ambulances for humans equipped with facilities, Rosario said Hipon 911 also has important equipment like microscope, oxygen tanks, styro boxes, water quality monitoring kits, sterile sampling bottles and other paraphernalia.

With Hipon 911, he said Taura Syndrome, a catastrophic shrimp disease, would be prevented from entering the country.

The team starts its actual fieldwork on Sept. 8 by getting samples of post-larvae of P. vannamei in grow-out farms.

“The team itself will go to the farms to check and monitor and immediately remedy any problem,” he said.

The rigid screening of P. vannamei breeders that are imported from Hawaii and Florida in the United States starts at the airport where Rosario and Dr. Leobert de la Peña of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) in Iloilo, one of the experts on shrimp diseases, check them.

The breeders are supposed to have been checked prior to their shipment by the University of Arizona, and once cleared, are allowed to be imported.

Yet upon arrival in the Philippines, Rosario’s team still get five male and five female samples out of the 500 pairs of vannamei breeders that are brought to SEAFDEC via airplane for laboratory analysis. The other breeders are transported to BFAR here.

The test will take about three days. If a problem arises, the experts meet again and repeat the procedure until the results become conclusive.

If indeed there is a problem, they destroy the entire shipment no matter the cost.

It is only when the breeders are certified as specific pathogen-free stocks that they are distributed to farms.

“That’s how tedious the process is,” Rosario said, adding that they follow this to avoid a repeat of the disease that destroyed the tiger prawn industry.

When a vannamei farmer buys post-larvae from another hatchery, Rosario said he could also avail himself of the services of the Hipon 911 to ensure that he is getting good quality.

“We do not wait for fishfarmers to go to us. We go to their farms to conduct regular monitoring to ensure that the shrimp industry is alive and free from problems,” Rosario said.