Billions Raised, Rarely Seen: Inside the Global Shrimp Farming Industry

Photographer: Marcos Zegers, Ulet Ifansasti

Videographer: Marcos Zegers, Ulet Ifansasti

Shrimp are among the most numerous animals raised by humans, with billions of individuals bred and killed every year, yet they remain among the least visible.

In 2025 and 2026, working with the NGO Animal Welfare Observatory on an international investigation into shrimp farming, our photojournalists travelled to Ecuador and Indonesia to document the industry first-hand. From hatcheries producing hundreds of millions of larvae each day to vast pond systems visible only from the air, these investigations offer a rare look inside a global industry built around the lives of billions of animals.

Although shrimp farming takes different forms in Latin America and Asia, shaped by local practices, geography, and global demand, the photographs reveal a common thread: an industry that operates on an immense scale, largely hidden from public view.

Indonesia: The World’s Fourth Largest Shrimp Exporter

Although shrimp have been farmed in Indonesia for centuries, today’s industry operates on an entirely different scale. Stretching across more than 81,000 kilometres of coastline, the world’s largest archipelago is now also the world’s fourth-largest exporter of farmed shrimp, producing close to one million tonnes annually. Much of that production supplies markets in the United States and Japan.

Through drone photography and video footage, photojournalist Ulet Ifansasti documented an expansive landscape of green ponds, where aerators churn the water around the clock as workers monitor water quality, feed shrimp and track their development during a grow-out cycle that typically lasts about 100 days. Only when viewed from above does the sheer scale of the operation become clear.

The images trace the industry’s production cycle back to the hatchery. Female shrimp here may lay eggs up to 35 times, with the breeding cycle repeating roughly every four days. Within five to six days, the newly hatched nauplii, the earliest stage of a shrimp’s life, are transferred to grow-out farms, where they continue developing until harvest.

At the hatchery, we captured a rarely documented practice called eyestalk ablation. The procedure, which involves amputating one eyestalk from female breeding shrimp to stimulate egg production, is widely used in commercial shrimp hatcheries worldwide. As scientific evidence continues to show that decapod crustaceans, including shrimp, can experience pain and distress, eyestalk ablation has come under increasing scrutiny from researchers and animal welfare experts.

Ecuador: Mangrove Ecosystems Obliterated

Shrimp has overtaken oil as Ecuador’s most valuable export, reflecting the steep growth of an industry that now supplies markets across Asia, Europe and North America. Over the past decade, Ecuador’s shrimp production has nearly quadrupled. In that time, it has transformed large stretches of the country’s Pacific coastline.

Photojournalist Marcos Zegers documented Ecuadorian shrimp farming at nearly every stage of production—from hatcheries producing millions of larvae each day to grow-out ponds stretching across hundreds of hectares, all the way down to processing plants where shrimp are peeled, frozen and packed for export.

The true scale of Ecuador’s shrimp industry is difficult to grasp from the ground. Mangroves are nurseries for fish and crustaceans, nesting grounds for birds, and a vital source of food and income for coastal communities. They also stabilize shorelines and store vast amounts of carbon. Although mangrove clearing is now regulated, the legacy of decades of expansion remains visible across Ecuador’s coastline, and many on the ground say that oversight and enforcement of these rules are weak.

Travelling by boat through Ecuador’s coastal estuaries, mangroves appear to frame the waterways; their dense roots create the impression of an intact ecosystem. It is only from the air that another landscape emerges: hundreds of shrimp ponds stretching across the coastline in a vast network of earthen berms, canals and pumping stations.

According to NASA Earth Observatory, nearly 60 percent of shrimp ponds in parts of Ecuador’s Gulf of Guayaquil occupy areas where mangrove forests once stood. Their conversion into shrimp ponds has made industrial aquaculture one of the region’s defining environmental challenges.

On July 8, in collaboration with Foodrise and supported by We Animals images, Animal Welfare Observatory released a scientific and technical report that uncovers the severe environmental, climate, and labour exploitation hidden behind Europe’s mass consumption of farmed shrimp.

Two Regions, A Common Lack of Visibility

What these investigations share is not a single way of farming shrimp, but a common lack of visibility. Billions of shrimp are raised every year, yet their lives and deaths unfold almost entirely out of public view.

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