- [Martin] That's why we have the goggles.
(water splashes)
So, gimme your hand here.
- [Dan] Yep.
- And add this one.
(upbeat music)
(Dan laughs)
- I'm in the middle of Los Angeles County right now,
in a tank, indoors,
in a warehouse with 25,000 shrimp.
(energetic music)
Wow. I got zero.
And we're gonna see how TransparentSea is raising them,
harvesting them and selling them.
TransparentSea is trying to optimize
the prawn-growing process.
They think that by controlling growing conditions,
they can raise them cleaner,
cheaper and more sustainably than farms across the world.
TransparentSea is the brainchild
of a guy named Steve Sutton,
a lifetime commercial fisherman
who spent years on shrimp farms across the world,
before deciding he could reinvent the process
right in Los Angeles.
The team brings in 100,000 microscopic prawn babies
every three weeks,
with the goal of turning them into
$100,000 worth of jumbo prawns in just three months.
The next step is tinkering with the ideal living conditions,
whether that's feed rates,
filtration and current,
to create the biggest, happiest shrimp they can.
And to this point, it's really working.
LA chefs are lining up to cook with this product.
So today,
I'm in Los Angeles to see if this is a model
that can really work and create a product
that is not only better for the planet,
but even more delicious.
Welcome to "Dan Does."
(upbeat music)
- So this would be a box overnighted from FedEx
with about 12,000 shrimp in it.
- Really?
- Yeah.
Be one of eight boxes we receive every three weeks.
So we get about a hundred thousand each shipment.
- [Dan] So like, eight boxes becomes-
- [Steve] Around $100,000 worth of saleable shrimp
if all goes well.
- So what is actually in here?
- They're actually 15-day-old,
what's called post larvae.
- So why don't you just make babies here?
Like, why do you have to bring babies in?
- So the genetics are super important.
You can kind of be a penny wise, a pound foolish.
If you don't have a good handle
on the mother and father and like,
how fast they can grow
and how resistant they are to disease,
you can end up with shrimp that take 14, 17 weeks
instead of 12 weeks to grow.
And so, you lose a lot of money on that.
So every three weeks we get a new shipment.
We'll open it up,
then they're gonna go into the nursery.
- [Dan] Steve says that in the next iteration of the farm
they intend to hatch their own prawns,
but for now they wanna get the living conditions right
before they have their own babies.
(upbeat jazzy music)
From here,
the team slowly drops the salinity down
to the level they want it,
before dumping the babies in one of the two nursery tanks.
The nursery tanks use a technology called biofloc,
which is where they add carbon
to create a natural, self-filtering ecosystem.
The later tanks use a technology called clearwater,
where the undesirables are actually filtered out.
Okay, so we are standing in front of,
there are two nurseries,
and each one of these nurseries
will hold the prawns for about three weeks.
- [Steve] That's right.
- And in three weeks,
they're ready to move on the next stage.
We're lucky to be here today,
because today is actually transfer day.
And the goal is to move everything from this nursery
to a grow tank, as fast as possible.
- [Steve] Now, these ones have to move
in the next day or two.
So yeah, I'd say this is a good day.
- All right, let's scoop 'em and move 'em.
- Don't fall in.
- [Dan] Down towards the ground.
Oh my God, they're hopping!
Oh, I feel 'em!
- [Steve] You feel 'em?
Let's see what you got.
Now give 'em a little shake in the water
to get that foam out.
- So now?
- Now you're gonna try and collect with your hands.
There you go, you got 'em down in one spot.
- [Dan] Eek!
- [Steve] Just keep going, all the way around.
You got 'em.
- [Dan] The trick of the transfer stage
is moving all of the prawns as fast as possible,
so that they acclimate and start eating
and adjust to their new environment,
all at the same time.
So, for this next few hours,
it's kind of a mad dash.
Whoa!
- [Steve] All right, so shake.
Yeah, lower 'em in,
turn the basket forward,
and then shake on the way out.
They grow a lot better in here.
Takes them a couple days to get situated
and then they start taking off and grow.
These guys are already eating.
They'll clean up the walls
and eat any algae that's grown in the past few days in here,
will be gone.
- Okay, so what is this tank?
Like, obviously it looks like a race track a bit.
- Yeah.
- Is that on purpose?
- Yeah, so it's actually called a raceway.
Basically, it's an optimal growing system for shrimp.
And what it does,
it just creates a circular current.
Water comes in at two points in our system here
and keeps 'em swimming.
- [Dan] So it's funny like,
until they hit the water
they're kind of out of it.
- [Steve] Yeah.
- [Dan] Kind of like, asleep.
And then they hit the water and they just go, bloop.
- [Steve] Oh yeah. Life.
- [Dan] Why are we calling them prawns?
Are they prawns or shrimp?
- [Steve] They're technically prawns,
but the market calls them white shrimp.
- [Dan] Okay.
- They're Pacific whiteleg prawn, is the actual species.
- [Dan] So your goal here is to be like,
the most efficient shrimp grower in the world, right?
- [Steve] We wanna change a really inefficient industry
into one that's as efficient as it can possibly be.
This farm is a big step.
- [Dan] So let's talk about
some of the elements of this tank.
First is the feeder.
Is this unique to you?
Or is this like-
- No, these are really common in aquaculture.
It's just a timer with a belt.
So there's a timer here
and the belt just slowly creeps forward.
So we come in in the morning,
we fill the belt,
we weigh out the feed based on the size and the population.
And we fill the belt and it slowly drops in.
- It seems to me that filtration is like,
the thing that you don't see in these tanks,
but that is like the majority of the headache
and the operations that go into it, right?
The next,
and arguably the most important step in the whole operation,
is water filtration,
which are done in central locations
for all the tanks in the warehouse.
For the filtration,
first, a drum filter uses centrifugal force
to remove all the physical solids from the water.
Then for the dissolved waste,
the water is pumped into giant tanks
with a plastic medium that uses its surface area
to attract the undesirables.
Mastering the filtration allows TransparentSea
to reuse over 95% of its water.
This room is obviously really hot
and it's at 86 degrees, you said?
- Yeah.
- And is this the kind of thing where like,
you would try it at 90,
try it at 80,
just to see where you're gonna get the most growth?
- This shrimp's grown around the world.
It's a tropical species that's from Mexico
all the way down to Peru.
They can survive up to 93 degrees,
but they could start to have problems at that temperature.
Similarly, they can go down to 65,
but they're not gonna grow very much.
They're gonna be very, very sluggish.
So this is just their prime temperature
and allows us to be much more efficient.
They don't fight current,
they don't fight cold temperatures at night,
everything's stable.
So from here-
- [Dan] They'll live out here for eight weeks
and then we can go check out some harvesting right now?
- Yeah, and right now we have five crops on the farm.
So we have the baby crop,
this is our second youngest crop.
It's about 30 days on the farm.
We have another crop that's about three weeks ahead.
And another crop, six weeks ahead.
- Awesome, let's go.
Oh, whoa, okay,
you can see that these are,
so this is mid-level, midsize.
- [Steve] Midsize.
- What reason would you actually have to like, monitor?
Like what are we checking on?
- [Steve] Daily, we check the bottom
and in order to grow, shrimp molt.
So they change their shell.
When they're tiny,
like those little guys,
they're molting every day in order to grow.
When they're this size,
they're probably molting every several days.
By the time they're harvest size,
they're molting every two weeks.
If there are too many molts sitting on the bottom,
they'll collect feed and they'll start to rot, basically.
- [Dan] Right.
- [Steve] And if that happens,
in the course of two, three days,
everything will be dead.
- Can we scoop some out?
- Let's do it.
- Why are we going to the bottom?
Just-
- [Steve] There's generally more at the bottom.
They do like to swim in our system.
But you got some.
Maybe 20, 25.
- And so, very simply,
like, what is your system here?
- So it goes through these screens
and down these six-inch pipes,
into two 12-inch pipes,
they go down to the actual filtration equipment.
These guys are feeding and they're active.
And just like us,
they respire,
they use oxygen,
they produce carbon dioxide.
We need to take some of that out and then,
it'll be pumped through some sterilization equipment,
down this 12-inch pipe,
into each respective tank.
- [Dan] From here,
I have to get a wetsuit on,
so I can actually get in the tank.
- All right, time to harvest.
I'm gonna need you to put this on.
- A suit?
- Yep.
(musical note sparkles)
(energetic music)
We're gonna harvest tank four.
- How do I look?
- Two, three. You look great.
You look very handsome.
- I really do not want to get into this water right now.
- These guys have been on the farm now for two months,
coming up on just about ready to harvest.
- It is wild.
Look how they all,
I mean, they're huge.
They're all sort of, uniform.
They sort of look like they're all got somewhere to go.
I was sort of stalling because I was super nervous
to get in the tank with all these swimming shrimp.
It is not something that I'm incredibly comfortable with.
The first step is actually pulling up the raceway
so we can use half of the tank
to trap the shrimp in a net,
which we'll eventually pull up.
They're like, this is my tank.
Ack!
(Dan laughs)
- [Steve] Yeah. You're in their world now.
- [Martin] And now this top part's gonna come down
and you're just gonna cinch 'em together.
This is great stuff.
- Like, I can feel the,
you're feeling some like,
attacks on my feet.
- Yeah.
- Why don't you wear water shoes?
- We don't wear water shoes,
'cause we want to feel how the tank is.
We wanna see if it's clean,
if it's dirty,
where the molts are
and how the shrimp are doing.
- So we could wear water shoes.
- If you wanted to.
I have Brody's if you want.
- No, no, no. Come on.
(Martin chuckles)
I'm in it for the long haul here.
I cannot tell,
I mean they are,
they love my feet.
I'm doing good.
I like it.
I mean-
- [Steve] You're not moving a lot, which is fine.
(Dan laughs)
- But you always drag your feet?
You're always shuffling?
- Yeah, I shuffle.
I usually walk on my big toes.
- Okay.
- We're gonna take our seine net.
It's 25 feet around.
And I'm gonna have you go all the way across
and just hug that net against the wall.
And you're gonna go full circle all the way through.
- How am I doing?
- [Steve] We'll find out.
- When is it,
it gets a little dicey once we get closer, right?
- [Steve] Yep, yeah.
(Dan cackles)
- All right.
So now we have a big O.
- [Dan] Yep.
(water splashes)
- And my next step is getting in the O.
- [Dan] Okay.
- So we've probably got 50 pounds of shrimp
in this seine net right now.
(Dan laughs)
- All right, so all this here,
is our catch.
- [Martin] Yes.
They're all at the bottom.
- [Dan] From here the goal is to trap all the shrimp
that are caught in the net,
but for today's purpose,
we're just doing one quick restaurant run
and the batch isn't totally ready.
So we're letting a lot go before we actually harvest.
We got some shrimp.
- [Steve] We got some shrimp.
We're gonna find out right now,
Matthew's gonna sort 'em,
but overall you did well.
- [Dan] So that's our haul?
- [Steve] That's your catch, man.
- [Dan] The last step is moving the shrimp
to the counting, processing, weighing room,
where they'll be divided between sizes
and then packaged up to go to restaurants.
(upbeat music)
- So we got about a little less than nine pounds.
- This is 'cause you're taking out one restaurant's order.
This would be like 50 pounds, right?
- [Steve] So normally we would do anywhere from a hundred
to three or 400 pounds in a day.
- [Dan] Mmm hmm.
- [Steve] So this sorting table
that we're about to use would be full.
- [Dan] The shrimp are sorted into large,
jumbo and actually, soft-shell shrimp,
which is something that is not typically seen in the US.
You're selling them based on weight,
so there's a cutoff where they're not growing much more.
- So our target size is large,
which is just an arbitrary naming of a shrimp
that's around 30 grams.
Anything bigger than that,
we call a jumbo and we get 'em,
you know, bigger than my hand.
So these actually are pretty unique.
- [Dan] I got one, I got one.
- [Steve] He's got one.
- [Dan] 25, baby!
- [Steve] That's a large.
- [Dan] That's some cheap.
Ooh, is that a soft shell?
Soft head?
- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.
He's on the soft.
(shrimp plops)
- It's so crazy that this bucket
starts from those little guys you bring in.
- Yeah.
And it's crazy on a full day,
I mean, we'll fill that fridge with these bins.
- [Dan] Yeah, I mean, these are all about 19, 20, 21 grams?
We'll get these packaged up
and move 'em on to the restaurant?
- Sounds good.
- This is our product.
- So there's your five-pound catch.
We're gonna bring these to the restaurant later,
but we've got the rest of them to mess around with.
(upbeat music)
- Wow. That's insane.
Tasting that,
I feel like I'm in like, Spain or something.
You know, off some coast or something, and yeah.
(Steve laughs)
- Yeah, 'cause the idea is if we're gonna change an industry
that's got a lot of problems-
- You gotta win.
You gotta have the best stuff.
- We gotta make high quality stuff.
- [Dan] In order for Steve's mission to work,
he has to have the best prawns.
And I wanted to see what a top chef would do with them.
So we took a batch over
to the Michelin recognized Holbox.
- So we got the big ones coming in about two weeks.
- Okay.
- We wanna bring you some of the new batch to get started.
- Yeah, these look great, man.
I'm gonna take these inside
and we're gonna make an aguachile.
And see what else we can do with them.
- [Steve] Good. All right.
- [Dan] With shrimp of this quality, I mean,
you can eat it just like that.
- Good head.
I mean,
aguachile is a Northern Mexican variation on a ceviche.
The whole idea of it,
it's supposed to be spicy,
tangy, refreshing and simple.
And you need really high-quality shrimp to make it work.
(knife knocks)
- Were you surprised when you got his shrimp first?
- You know, I got the news from Steve
that the project had moved to Downey.
It sounded like a super complicated project.
(Gilberto chuckles)
First, I'm like,
"Wait, you're gonna farm shrimp in LA?
Like, the most expensive land in the country,
you're gonna do a shrimp farm."
I'm like,
"Okay, well that's ambitious,"
but, I love the idea
of having fresh shrimp in the neighborhood.
I mean, that's wild.
Well, shrimp is gonna be
one of the easiest things to source.
It's actually been the hardest thing to source.
(blender whirs)
(energetic music)
- [Gilberto] Cheers.
- [Dan] Cheers.
- [Steve] Oh, yeah.
Tangy, a little spice.
- [Dan] These little things
were hitting me in the leg today.
This is (beep) incredible.
It's so crazy to me because to me like,
this is the balance of like,
art and technology.
- Summer's gonna be good.
- I hope so, man.
People are calling.
- [Dan] After seeing how a chef like Gilberto
reacted to the product and just how good it tasted,
I thought, this could really be something, you know?
And that's exciting because if the model works,
there could be hundreds of these farms across the country,
providing all kinds of hyper-local, sustainable seafood,
not just to restaurants, but to grocery stores.
And it seems like that would both,
improve our food systems
and give people access to a healthier,
more delicious product.
- But, it's really about
if we can get everybody to kind of win,
the beauty of it,
it's driven by the people who pay for his food and eat it.
- Sure.
- Yeah.
- If they make the choice to pay more
for something that's sustainable,
and he's conveying well the message to them
and his servers know what to say,
he cooks the product beautifully,
I mean, it's kind of how it has to be.
- Hmm.
- Amazing. Well, thank you so much.
And, thank you.
- You got it.
(hands slap)
Greasy shrimp hand.
- No, it's okay.