Shrimp aquaculture is an important industry, which has become the second largest producer of farmed
aquatic animals in the world (FAO 2010). Phytoplankton is generally encouraged to bloom in an intensive
shrimp culture system, which is a major shrimp culture system worldwide, and is useful in the removal of
surplus nutrients. However, phytoplankton is unstable and sensitive to changes in environmental conditions,
such as salinity, sunlight, and water temperature. Thus, the phytoplankton is difficult to control and
requires specialized techniques. Seaweeds are able to convert excess nutrients in the aquaculture systems
into biomass, which also presents the possibility to generate additional revenue from the integrated multitrophic
aquaculture (IMTA) system. However, the consistent promotion or adoption of such systems has
not been achieved (Troell, 2009). We suspect that the selection of seaweed species may not always have
been appropriate to the specific environmental conditions particular to shrimp aquaculture ponds,
especially their wide fluctuations of salinity and water temperature. Accordingly, it is required to apply
new suitable species for use in co-culture with shrimp and prawn. Chaetomorpha sp. (a filamentous
seaweed) and Stenothyra sp. (a micro snail) are not popular for IMTA because they have generally been
considered nuisance, however, these organisms have characteristics of euryhaline and eurythermal. Our
system is unique in that these unexploited benthoses are utilized to promote shrimp growth and quality and
not to try to provide a supplemental income. In this presentation, the speaker introduces the basic concept
for our shrimp co-culture system and some of the advantages of this co-culture system for sustainable
shrimp culture with low cost and low carbon discharge for small scale shrimp aquaculturists in southeast
Asian countries.