She helped turn many of the world’s prawn farmers into millionaires, but Jurgenne Primavera now worries that her life’s work might have indirectly accelerated the destruction of fish nurseries. The Filipina zoologist, whose research on breeding the black tiger prawn became a manual that revolutionized the aquaculture industry, pointed at 66 hectares (163 acres) of brackish water fishponds at the bottom of a windy bluff in this seaside town south of Manila. Despite cheap government loans and generous land leases in the 1970s, prawn culture failed to reach its full potential in the Philippines, where the ponds turned out to be better suited for growing milkfish, said Primavera of the Philippines-based Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Centre.

Morella, C. (2008, April 11). Prawn sandwich destroys Philippines fish nurseries. The Manila Times, p. A5.