Lake Beloe (Berezovsky District) is the only place in Belarus where a unique thermophilic subtropical species lives - the eastern river shrimp Macrobrachium nipponense.
At home, in South-East Asia is considered a delicacy. They say in China under the eastern New Year the cost of a kilogram of these freshly caught freshwater crustaceans reaches 15 dollars, and about one hundred thousand tons of them are harvested in the Celestial Empire annually. In our country, except for scientists, this shrimp is not interesting to anyone.
We are talking with Viktor Kulesh, associate professor of the Department of General Biology, BSPU named after M. Tanka. He came to the Beloozersk branch of the Selets fish farm to continue the study of the unique crustacean and told about the history of its appearance in Belarus.
In the USSR, the eastern river shrimp was first discovered in the Moscow region in the cooling pond of GRES-3 im. engineer R.E. Klasson. They brought in there from the Yangtze River for breeding grass carp and by chance, with water, shrimp larvae were also brought. She took root there. Then the Berezovskaya GRES was built in Belarus, and the Beloe Lake became a cooling pond for it. After the launch of the station, the water temperature in the lake increased, while crayfish and some predatory species fish - pike perch, pike. A free ecological niche appeared that required filling. Young Belarusian scientists Viktor Kulesh and Anatoly Alekhnovich, now leading Researcher Scientific Research Center for Bioresources of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. They had an idea to fill an empty niche with any species in order to enrich the food supply of fish and, if possible, have commercial value.
The eastern river shrimp was ideal for this purpose. It took two years to write a justification for the settlement of shrimp in Lake Beloe. And in 1982, under the leadership of Professor N.N. Khmelevoy, they launched about 1,500 specimens of adult Macrobrachium nipponense into Lake Beloe. Since then, she has successfully acclimatized, entered the diet predatory fish, primarily perch. Shrimp larvae in plankton are food for planktivorous inhabitants of the lake. On the recommendations of Belarusian scientists, the shrimp was then acclimatized in the Kuchurgan estuary in Moldova and the cooling pond of the Primorskaya TPP in Russia. And Viktor Kulesh and Anatoly Alekhnovich still come to Beloozersk to fish ponds, where the object of their attention comes from the lake, grows and where it is convenient to catch. Study annual fluctuations the number of shrimp, its food ties and other biological subtleties. They say it's very interesting.
The entire thirty-year observation experience is summarized in the monograph by V.F. Kulesha "Biology of the cultivation of commercial species of freshwater shrimp and crayfish in warm waters", which was published this year by the Moscow publishing house "New knowledge".
In addition to Macrobrachium nippo-nense, Belarusian scientists also worked on a giant freshwater shrimp on the White Lake, brought it from Japan and Thailand. And got enough nice results... But the giant is more difficult to raise because its larva requires salt water. And if this stage is carried out in an incubator, then the adults also live well in Lake Beloye.
Today, the number of eastern river shrimp in the lake is estimated at millions. Where can you taste the Chinese delicacy? It turns out nowhere. Nobody in Belarus does this.
According to Viktor Kulesh, some of our small businesses could be engaged in the extraction and supply of shrimp, for example, to its own gourmet restaurant (the volume of the lake for an industrial scale, alas, is not enough). And scientists would help businessmen with their recommendations on its cultivation and capture.
News of Belarus. Shrimp is one of the goods that came under Russian sanctions. Now they are looking for alternative suppliers. Our country could partly make its contribution to the solution of this issue. A delicacy of Belarusian origin is not a myth, but a reality.
In the Brest region, shrimps have been chosen by the local reservoir more than three decades ago. However, so far neither local residents nor large industrialists are in a hurry to do business on exotic representatives of the fauna. Will the Belarusian delicacy appear on store shelves?
Local residents do not order shrimp dishes in restaurants. They prefer to get the delicacy on their own.
Old-timers tell with regret: before the shrimp was large and walked along the coast, now it is very shallow and at depth. At the same time, they assure: the taste of crustaceans from a local reservoir is no worse than from store shelves, but there they are much more expensive.
Edward Bouter:
Delicious, I've cooked them before. You catch and cook a lot.
The very presence of a subtropical river shrimp in the net on this reservoir has long been no surprise. Exotic representatives of the fauna in an artificial canal near the Berezovskaya SDPP appeared in the 80s. After the start of the station, the water temperature rose sharply. The usual crayfish and pike have disappeared, but the shrimps, whose homeland is Southeast Asia, felt at home in water with a temperature of "30+".
Edward Bouter:
When all the blocks were working and there was very hot water in winter, it spawned all around. And when one or two blocks began to work, the water became cold and spawning was poor. Not the right conditions for spawning. Even some, I saw, caught five of them, they came from Poland and bought them. They didn't take the big one. For decorating dishes, I guess.
Local fishermen do not consider oriental shrimp as a delicacy; crustaceans are used for bait. Both carp and silver carp bite into an exquisite product that would please any gourmet.
Scientists who launched shrimp into a reservoir as an experiment 30 years ago hope that a Belarusian businessman will finally "bite" on a unique project.
Victor Kulesh, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of General Biology and Botany, BSPU:
A very interesting problem is the utilization of waste heated heat from power facilities, in particular thermal power plants. And in order to increase the efficiency of this heat, the idea was to breed thermophilic species of invertebrates, in particular freshwater shrimp.
Another area is working with crayfish... It is quite possible to grow them in small volumes. We have already worked out the technology. It is necessary to have interested people.
Shrimp of Belarusian origin today cannot be found even on the shelves of fish stores. Experts say: for industrial production the volume of the White Lake, of course, will not be enough for the Chinese delicacy. But she is quite capable of entering a new line in the menu of national restaurants, according to the News 24 Hours program on STV.
The artificial lake Beloe near the town of Beloozersk, Berezovsky region, is the only reservoir in Belarus where eastern river shrimp is found. Scientists brought it here more than 30 years ago, and the place was not chosen by chance.
The fact is that because of the Berezovskaya GRES, the temperature in the canal is higher than in other reservoirs of Belarus. Lake White for the station is a cooling pond. According to local residents, the water here does not freeze even in winter, and in summer it warms up to + 30 ° C degrees.In 1982, about 1.5 thousand specimens of adults of the eastern river shrimp were launched into the lake. Since then, it has successfully acclimatized and entered the diet of predatory fish. V industrial scale shrimp are not caught now, however, according to some scientists, it is possible. But the giant freshwater shrimp did not take root in the reservoir.
Several years ago, Belarusians were able to taste the “homemade” trout. Many fish farmers believe that the seas and oceans are already depleted, so the emphasis is now on intensive fish farming, including trout. Per last years several specialized farms appeared in the republic. So already in soon one third of the red fish of the salmon family is Belarusian market will be domestic.
Its delicacies
According to the SPC for Bioresources of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, grape snails are invasive view brought to us in XVII-XIX centuries for parks of the nobility as exotic. Now this species is widespread in about 80 regions of Belarus. The purposeful harvesting of grape snails in Belarus began in 1993. Some summer residents and farmers specially grow snails on their plots.
The Ministry of Natural Resources annually sets limits on their procurement and purchase by legal entities and individual entrepreneurs... You can get shellfish without special permission: no more than 100 kg per day. Fishing is prohibited only from July 15 to September 1, when snails breed. Snails with shells less than 25 millimeters in size cannot be harvested. Today in our stores snails are sold frozen in Burgundy, Italian, and royal style. In addition, in January-October 2016, Belarus exported over 270 tons of snails.
In the opinion Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Mikhail RUSOGO, our country should not ignore industrial breeding and marketing grape snails as well as long-toed crayfish, green frogs and bloodworms. According to him, the sale of such resources brings significant dividends to local budgets.
Watermelons and melons
More and more farmers are interested in the prospect of growing watermelons and melons in Belarus. The volume of cultivation is small, and farmers sell crops mainly on the spot - in their area. The main watermelon and melon fields are located in the Brest and Gomel regions.
We can say that a new agro-climatic zone has appeared in Belarus, which covers the Malorita, Drogichinsky, Luninetsky, Stolin districts of the Brest region, as well as Lelchitsky, partially Zhitkovichi, Braginsky, Narovlyansky districts of the Gomel region. Climatic conditions in this area are comparable to the north of Ukraine. This allows us to introduce new varieties and crops that were not previously characteristic of our region.
What else?
Residents of the southern regions of Belarus are no longer surprised by trees with apricots, peaches, grapes, quince. Are grown walnuts, hazelnuts, some sorts of tea. More than 500 hectares grow blueberries, cranberries, chokeberries. For further freezing and canning, we grow sweet corn, asparagus beans, vegetable peas. Are already being cultivated on an industrial scale different types cabbage - kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, Peking cabbage, broccoli.And a few years ago, at the Minsk vegetable factory, for the sake of experiment, they even grew several bushes of bananas. They were small - only 10-15 cm long. However, so far they are not going to grow an exotic plant in our country: it is unprofitable from an economic point of view.
There is a meme "Belarusian shrimps".
But this is the same as blaming the Belarusian gasoline produced at the republic's oil refineries, despite the absence of serious oil deposits in the country.
Or would anyone start to argue that there are no coffee plantations in Switzerland? (coffee "Nestlé").
There is such a thing as "processing". It is described below, so to speak, an educational program on the topic of where Belarusian shrimps and mussels come from. Obviously, I'm not talking about Polish apples.
The phenomenon of Belarusian shrimp arose against the backdrop of statements that Belarus is re-exporting seafood. Re-export is, first of all, the export of goods previously imported into it from the country for resale to other countries. At the same time, goods can be re-exported both unchanged and after minor processing, for example, repackaging and sorting, which excludes processing.
In the case of shrimp, the process looks like this: they make finished product- it is either boiled frozen IQF shrimp, that is, boiled and frozen individually, or preserves from seafood.
90% of the processed shrimp are caught in open water trawls, the rest are raised on farms. Shrimp marketed must be labeled “wild shrimp” or “aquaculture”.
Wild shrimp are valued higher and have a more balanced composition. And mussels are predominantly a product of aquaculture farms. In these boxes - king prawn from China, "aquaculture" (seafood was shock-frozen immediately after the catch)
Despite the presence of the Minsk Sea, shrimp in Belarus is hardly promising from the point of view of fishing. She needs special conditions: warmth, salty water etc. The world has shrimp from northern seas(made in Norway, Denmark, Canada and other countries) and southern. Considering the targeting of mutual sanctions, both Russian and Belarusian producers (even despite the depth of processing) reoriented towards the latter.
- We only work with shrimp from southern seas, and the sanctions in no way affect the countries that supply this shrimp (India, China), as well as other imported seafood (Chile, Peru, Vietnam). Therefore, our enterprise could sell shrimp to Russia even without processing. Moreover, Russian enterprises work with the same suppliers. So there were no problems in working with the Russian market, where we have been supplying seafood for ten years, and even more so, we did not have any refusals to cooperate.
Before processing, imported shrimps are kept in special storage rooms at a temperature of -20 ° C.
- Further, the raw materials are sent to the unpacking department, where frozen blocks in plastic packaging are laid out on racks and sent to the defrosting chambers. Depending on the size of the block, they will have to spend 5-6 hours here until the temperature in the block reaches -1-0 ° C. With such a gentle defrosting, the shrimp meat retains all its valuable parameters.
In addition to standards of taste and health, shrimp must meet strict requirements for outward appearance... According to world rules, the size range of seafood is defined as the number of pieces per unit of weight. The size range of a shrimp has a format designation x / y, where x is the minimum, and y is maximum amount shrimp in one pound (less than half a kilogram). Size, for example king prawn calibrated from 41/50 to 61/70.
- Octopus and squid are tastier when small, young, and shrimp and crabs acquire flavor and beneficial features with age, - says Elena Goroshko.
After thawing, the seafood is sent to sorting, where quality inspection is carried out. Employees visually check for size discrepancies and foreign matter. In our case, mussels were checked. Unlike shrimp, they are frozen at the place of catch and sold already cooked (blanched) - these are the features of the supply of mussels.
After inspection, the shrimp is sent for processing. This takes place in large plastic containers with a solution containing salt, fruit acids and other prescription ingredients. The manufacturer assures that all components have a natural composition.
- The shrimp stays here for a certain time, during which the meat loses the specific smell of raw materials and slightly thickens. This process can be conventionally called maturation.
Ripe shrimp is ready for boiling. For this, the container is fed to an automated line. The process is clearly and strictly controlled in terms of temperature, speed, duration and other parameters. Moving along the conveyor, the shrimp passes the heat treatment zone in a matter of minutes: it is boiled at 96-98 ° C (for chilled products) or blanched at 65-70 ° C (if it will be further frozen).
- Look, our shrimp has a gray-pink color in its raw state. After heat treatment, it turns white, the meat loses its transparency and becomes denser, - Elena Goroshko draws attention.
After cooking, the shrimp is quickly cooled in ice water. The cooking process stops - the shrimp is already edible. Depending on the production cycle, it goes further: either for freezing or for packaging.
In general, not all buyers seem to know about cooking in production. Therefore, shrimp is cooked at home (like sausages, by the way) - this is completely unnecessary. It is enough to put them in boiling salted water for a couple of minutes to simply heat them up.
After boiling and cooling, the shrimp is unloaded into mobile carts and transported to the packaging area. Here is one of the types of products. The trays are thermoformed. A portion of the product is placed in the tray, then it is filled with pre-prepared oil or filling. The package is covered with foil and sealed with simultaneous air displacement (evacuated). The product is labeled and packed in boxes.
Over the past four years, the share of chilled seafood in their total volume has grown threefold. Now this is the main part of the production portfolio.
In another way, frozen shrimp enters the packaging, which first needs to go through the cold section of a large tunnel.
Shock freezing is an extremely important stage in the technological cycle. Shrimps are processed with an air stream with a temperature of -30 ° C. Thus, each shrimp is frozen individually, which, in addition to preserving all useful qualities, provides convenience for further use of the finished product.
Shrimp, just out of the freezer, becomes slightly dull - until it gets under the jets ice water... The time has come for the very glazing that customers so often complain about.
In fact, the shrimp glaze is essential: it will protect the product from oxidation and dehydration.
- Glazing is natural safe way preservation of the consumer qualities of seafood, which prevents their oxidation, dehydration and spoilage. Therefore, this process is mandatory and necessary. According to the rules Russian market the glaze should be no more than 7% by weight of the product. According to the current Belarusian rules, this percentage is not yet limited, ”says Elena Goroshko. - On the Belarusian market, most of the frozen seafood produced by the Santa Bremor company has 30% glaze. We also make frozen seafood in a unique skin package, where the percentage of glaze is 10% - this is the lowest indicator in Belarus.
The Chief Processor acknowledges that many of the complaints are valid when looking at the seafood market as a whole and considering all producers.
- Ice cover is a sore point. Firstly, ice often builds up or crumbles, ceasing to serve main goal, due to improper storage in trade objects. But it is also impossible to deny that there are unscrupulous manufacturers who take advantage of the absence of strict norms in national legislation. We ourselves were shocked when we found up to 60% ice in the products of some colleagues. This is a matter of conscience.
Elena Goroshko reminds that the percentage of glaze should be indicated in the labeling, and also tells how to correctly measure the amount of glaze at home.
- Take frozen shrimp, weigh and place in a colander. Then rinse off the glaze with cold running water. It is important to completely wash off the ice, but not to allow the shrimp to defrost, as it itself contains about 80% water. The most common mistake is when the surface of the shrimp is partially thawed and tissue juice is lost. Put the shrimp back on the scale and count the difference.
After glazing, the frozen shrimp meat is transported along a conveyor to the packaging area. Dosing and filling are carried out automatically. Packaged shrimp are placed in a shipping container and sent to the finished product warehouse.
The products are passed through a metal detector prior to packaging. Experts found it difficult to remember when it worked, but just in case, the device is configured for three types of metal and non-metal.
Seafood can hardly be called strategically important for the Belarusian table. Especially economic problems affected sales in 2015. Now, they say in the company "Santa Bremor", the situation is improving.
- Two-thirds of the production volume is sold to Russia, the second market is Belarusian (26%), followed by Ukraine, the CIS and other countries. Now in Belarus, on average, they consume 300 grams of seafood per year, in Russia - 450. Despite the fact that the overall share of seafood in our production is small, it has been growing over the past five years.
Crustaceans from the Sineokoy lakes grow medium-sized - 3-5 centimeters in length. Therefore, those that have been caught off foreign shores are exported. Photo: Elena Palm / TASS
Three years ago, Belarusian shrimps suddenly became the most popular joke on TV: in KVN and humorous programs, they vied with each other, politicians demanded explanations, and ordinary buyers were surprised to photograph the price tags for seafood and posted on social networks with the captions: “Has anyone seen sea?"
Today passions have subsided, jokes repeated a hundred times no longer seem so funny, while shrimp are still delicious. Moreover, it turned out that they really are found in the reservoirs of the Sineokoy.
THE MOST WESTERN FAR EAST
There is a lake Beloe in the Brest region. Although it is man-made (tens of years ago, the river was dammed up here for the technical needs of the Berezovskaya GRES), the people sincerely love it. Inveterate fishermen come here from neighboring areas, and overcoming hundreds of kilometers. Some doze by the water over fishing rods, others happily pull another crucian carp to the shore. But there is a special category of catchers - those with nets, like Duremar from a fairy tale about Buratino. They didn't come for fish.
The lake is famous and even unique for its inhabitants - it is the only one in Belarus where in natural conditions the Far Eastern shrimp lives and reproduces. In its homeland in Southeast Asia, this species is considered a delicacy.
How's the catch? - we catch up with a young hunter for exotic, who now and then launches his simple device into the water.
Instead of answering, the boy holds out a butterfly net, in it is a local miracle. True, the crustacean does not quite look like the sea cousins that we are used to seeing in supermarkets. A brown body a few centimeters in size, small limbs. The miner does not hide his joy:
Shrimp is tastier than fish. I come in the morning, catch ten things, and you can cook! Mom likes it too.
But experienced fishermen prefer to let local "seafood" not for lunch. It turns out they are great bait. “The perch pecks like it is smeared with honey,” they joke on the shore.
EXPERIMENT ON SPACING
How did the Far Eastern shrimps come to Belarus, you ask? It is clear that not themselves. The secret was revealed by Anatoly Alekhnovich, an employee of the Laboratory of Hydrobiology of the Scientific and Practical Center of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus for Bioresources:
In these places, crayfish have always been found in lakes and rivers. Lake White is no exception. But when, due to the work of the Berezovskaya GRES, the water in it became warm all year round, the crayfish disappeared. It turned out to be hot for them. And so the biologists of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR in 1982 decided to fill the empty ecological niche a more thermophilic crustacean species.
But for something new for Belarus natural view fauna Anatoly, together with his colleagues, did not go to the shores at all The Pacific, and in the town of Elektrogorsk near Moscow. Yes, yes, you can also joke about Moscow shrimps. There is the same state district power station, and there is a similar reservoir. This is an exotic view from Of the Far East brought in much earlier. The experiment was recognized as successful: crustaceans and imported fish quickly acclimatized and began to breed.
GOLDEN DELICATES
We took this step not only out of scientific curiosity, - explains Anatoly Alekhnovich. “It was obvious that small crustaceans could be a good food source for fish. Indeed, a few years later, the number of catfish in the Belarusian lake increased dramatically on such a diet. But the shrimps themselves as a delicacy were of little interest to anyone: too small - fiddling with them is more than pleasure.
But the success of the eastern river shrimp inspired Belarusian scientists to new experiments. The Academy of Sciences tried to breed a giant freshwater shrimp... They were raised under special conditions, sending grown individuals on a long voyage, including in the same Beloe Lake. For several months, the shrimp managed to gain weight of thirty grams. The result is not bad for the Belarusian climate. It is already possible to put it on the counter.
But it never came to the broad scope of the “Belarusian shrimp industry”. The cultivation process turned out to be too costly - the shrimp turned out to be golden. It is easier and more profitable for companies that specialize in seafood processing to work on "give-and-take" raw materials.
TRANSIT FROM CHILE AND CHINA
Nevertheless, Belarus has long become a leading supplier of seafood (shrimp, mussels, squid, octopus, cuttlefish) to the markets of Eastern Europe... And this is not a joke: the Santa Bremor company processes up to five tons of seafood per day. Almost half of them are shrimps.
Raw materials are brought to the country, here they make delicacies from it, pack it and send it to stores. Moreover, the Belarusian shrimp is not a sanctioned product for Russia. Because the suppliers of Santa Bremor are India, China, Chile, Peru, Vietnam. Therefore, the enterprise could sell shrimp to Russia even without processing. So there are no problems in working with the Russian market, where the company has been supplying seafood for ten years.
A drop in the sea of fish
The blue-eyed shrimp business is niche. It is far from mass production.
The Belarusians themselves are not big fans of seafood. Although frozen shrimp can be bought in the fish department of any store, even in countryside, lion's share overseas delicacies that are made and processed in the country are sold to other countries. Two thirds of the volume goes to Russia, the second market is Belarusian (about 25 percent). The rest goes to Ukraine, to the CIS countries. And even if, in general, the share of seafood in the production of Blue-eyed is small (1 - 2 percent), in the last five years it has been growing slightly.
Consider packaging on occasion: shrimp from Belarus that are marketed should be labeled “wild shrimp” or “aquaculture”. Ninety percent of the shrimp processed in Belarus is caught by trawls in open water. They are brought to the republic as raw materials. The rest are grown on farms. Wild shrimp are valued higher and have a more balanced composition.
Last year, we even had to report on "blue-eyed" shrimps Prime Minister of the Republic Andrei Kobyakov. He admitted that Belarus mainly exports processed raw materials - the imported crustaceans are processed, cleaned, salted, boiled, packed, etc. As a result, the item code changes.
The product fully complies with the rules economic policy Customs Union... There can be no more claims against him, the prime minister added. - And if, God forbid, they reveal violations of the law in the supply, you need to ensure criminal prosecution those who are engaged in this business.
In the first quarter of this year, the Federal Customs Service (FCS) of Russia recorded a noticeable increase in the import of fish and seafood from Belarus - from January to April, goods were brought from the republic to total amount$ 37.7 million. This is a quarter more compared to the same period in 2016. In terms of weight, the increase is even more noticeable - by 57 percent.
Last year Belarus imported nearly twenty thousand tons of fish and seafood into Russia. This year is likely to be about a third more. But it is still a drop in the ocean for the Russian market. The FCS did not count shrimps separately - these are meager percentages in fish exports.
REPLICA
Evgeny Adamenko, Member of the Parliamentary Assembly Commission on Economic Policy:Belarusian shrimps are primarily a business. Being landlocked is not a problem if you want to work and earn money. Our fish and seafood processing facilities are good to that example. They employ thousands of people. They do their job in good faith. Therefore, we are not ashamed of the final product with the inscription: “Made in Belarus”.
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