Transforming Shrimp Aquaculture Sustainability with Monterey Bay Aquarium

Project Snapshot

• Client: The Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA), a leading non-profit organisation focused on transforming how seafood is fished and farmed through their Global Ocean Conservation programs
• Scale: Shrimp farms across a catchment of 4 million hectares containing over 174,000 regional farms.
• Geography: East and West Godavari, India.
• Core Goals: To understand, measure, and improve biodiversity outcomes within the shrimp production landscape, demonstrating that sustainable farming is both possible and investable.
• Approach: Leveraging NatureHelm for large-scale, rapid biodiversity assessments and the implementation of a scalable monitoring framework.

The Overview 

The Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) is a global advocate on ocean health and sustainable seafood. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Global Programs have been working on sustainability in the heart of India’s intensive shrimp production landscapes. Working with various local partners, the project involves experimental leasing of farms to test management methods that balance commercial production with sustainable outcomes.

To move from theoretical sustainability to “Nature Positive” investment, MBA needed to bridge a massive data gap: transitioning from looking solely at target commercial species (White-legged Shrimp) to understanding the complex ecosystems of the surrounding catchment.

The Challenge:

Establishing a Comprehensive Biodiversity Baseline in a Data-Deficient Landscape

Prior to engaging NatureHelm, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Global Programs lacked the foundational high-resolution data required to translate high-level conservation goals into measurable, site-specific outcomes.

Key challenges included:

• The Disease Management Crisis: Disease outbreak is the number one pain point for farmers. To help prevent the overuse of antimicrobials to treat outbreaks, MBA needed nature assessments to identify how healthy ecosystems can potentially mitigate disease risks naturally.
• Standardisation Hurdles: Existing industry certification standards, such as the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) Shrimp Standard, were often missing critical local biodiversity insights, leading to an incomplete picture of the “State of Nature.”
• Data Accessibility & Visualisation: MBA faced immense difficulty accessing and visualising detailed, on-the-ground biodiversity data across the massive catchments surrounding the pilot farms.
• The Catchment Perspective: Boundaries of impact and dependency exist far beyond individual farm ponds and across entire catchments.
• Identifying Material Species: The goal was to identify species specifically relevant to the aquaculture industry—those representing both dependencies (ecosystem services) and impact risks (threatened, invasive, or human-wildlife conflict species). 
• Methodological Gaps: The team lacked a comprehensive method for rapidly acquiring and evaluating biodiversity data to guide field monitoring and management interventions.
• Nature Transition – needed baseline to get comparable data for nature, sustainability performance metrics for finance.

Industry response: A Just Transition for Nature

The global seafood industry is under increasing pressure to move beyond simple “do no harm” approaches toward “nature-positive” outcomes. The MBA’s initiative represents a shift toward a “Just Transition,” where small-scale farmers are empowered to adopt sustainable practices that protect regional biodiversity while securing their own economic futures. This requires a shift from manual, anecdotal reporting to rigorous, data-driven transparency

Our Role: Bridging Technology and Ground-Truth

NatureHelm provided the analytical framework and expertise to translate raw ecological data into accessible intelligence, moving the focus from individual farm certification to regional verification. By integrating our platform into the project, we established a foundation for testing the effectiveness of different management actions.

• Unprecedented Data Aggregation: We pulled data from 53 different sources to create a comprehensive snapshot of the region’s biodiversity. This included the analysis of over 117,000 biodiversity observations, providing a baseline that had never existed for this landscape.
• Identifying Risks and Opportunities: Using NatureHelm’s tools, the team rapidly identified 1,239 species, including 67 threatened and 65 invasive species. This discovery uncovered a far greater diversity than previously anticipated by standard industry audits and allowed MBA Global Programs to consider “Double Materiality”—how the farms impact the environment and vice versa.
• Design of Scalable Monitoring: Based on results from NatureHelm’s platform, MBA Global Programs have now undertaken the first eDNA testing at and around shrimp farms and local water sources. These methods allow local teams to collect high-quality data, working with local universities for data analysis. .
• Certification vs Verification: While certification is often farm-specific and binary, NatureHelm’s catchment-wide assessment enables a broader “Nature Transition” for the entire region.
• Impactful Reporting: Our platform translated these complex findings into accessible data visualisations and downloadable project reports, providing Sustainability Project Coordinators with high-quality nature insights that can be included in regional nature strategies.

The Value Creation & Impact:

Commencing a New Standard for Sustainable Shrimp Aquaculture 

The collaboration provided rapid visualisation and critical data that accelerated MBA’s project progress by several years, filling a data gap and establishing the scientific confidence required to attract Blue Finance. Key value drivers included:

• Exploring Disease Management Solutions: By understanding the “State of Nature,” farmers can manage bacteria and environmental vectors, reducing antibiotic reliance and improving outcomes through nature-based solutions
• Unlocking Natural Capital: Credible baselines allow ecosystem services to be measured and monetised. This opens pathways for sustainability-linked loans, green loans, and nascent biodiversity credits (complementing mangrove-associated carbon credits)
• Strategic Risk Mitigation: Identifying species linked to potential human-wildlife conflict. By pinpointing these species early, NatureHelm enables the development of community engagement strategies that help sustainable management of both the farmers’ harvest and the local ecosystem—a critical requirement for securing Blue Finance.
• Data Gap Filled: Our platform aggregated a diverse array of data into a rich knowledge base for the first time, identifying over 1,200 species that were previously overlooked in standard regional reports.
• Accelerated Monitoring & Confidence: NatureHelm provided the scientific confidence to deploy scalable eDNA monitoring of the interface between shrimp farming and the surrounding environment.
• Connecting Actions to Outcomes: For the first time, MBA has the data to underpin funding proposals for specific regional scale interventions—such as sedimentation ponds or wetland restoration—that can be monitored and managed to improve outcomes for both biodiversity and shrimp farmers.
• Social Empowerment: The Global Ocean Conservation programs by MBA integrate social aspects, including female empowerment and community education. In the future work on  species identification and knowledge sharing can be developed to help ensure nature is seen as a shared asset.

Industry-wide value: Transforming Global Markets

NatureHelm’s work is central to a revolutionary shift in the shrimp industry. By moving beyond isolated farm management to landscape-scale biodiversity intelligence, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is creating a blueprint for the future of aquaculture and food systems. This data-driven approach builds the global trust necessary to unlock new market segments, including high-value European buyers.

Over the next five years, this data-driven approach aims to enable flourishing mangroves and healthier waters, while building the global trust necessary to unlock new market segments. The proven model in India is now ready to be scaled globally, cementing a leadership position in truly sustainable, nature-positive food systems. “Nature Positive” has become a measurable, verifiable reality for the global aquaculture industry.

Client Testimonial

“Partnering with NatureHelm has allowed us to take an ecosystem health approach to shrimp farm management. By identifying the specific species and risks within our production landscape, we are now building a monitoring program that sets a new global benchmark for sustainable aquaculture. Nature is a key part of the solution”

— Dr. Darian McBain, Senior Fellow, Monterey Bay Aquarium (Global Programs)