Clawing out of a rut
By Neo Rong Wei
From wild-caught to lab-grown — Singapore is putting mud crabs on dining tables, even when faced with a shrinking global supply of crabs.
Plastic bottles bob in the waters off the coast of Lorong Halus — home to around 40 floating fish farms.
This is not litter. These bottles are buoys marking the crab nets left by fishermen like 55-year-old Chew Guan Teck, allowing them to locate their catches easily.
After reeling his nets onto the fish farm — wooden planks floating on blue barrels — Mr Chew sorts his loot by size, before gently placing them into a bucket one by one.
“Last time, when we reel in the nets, they would come up looking like a bunch of rambutans,” says Mr Chew in a mixture of Mandarin and Hokkien.
“Now, sometimes zero crabs. Sometimes only one or two.”
Development off the coast and changing water temperatures have damaged both crab and fish supply, observed local fishermen.
Mr Chew has been plying his trade out at sea for 30 years. But recently, there seems to be less marine life out there.
This problem is not unique to Singapore. Mud crab population dipped by 30 percent last year in the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka — all countries that Singapore commonly imports from, reported The Straits Times.
Suppliers say this is due to bad weather conditions brought on by global warming, as well as overfishing. Coupled with an ever-growing demand for crab from large economies like China, this has spiked crab prices over the past five years.
One solution is to go high-rise.
Condominiums are the last thing you expect to find deep in the winding roads of Lim Chu Kang. Yet here they are, arranged neatly into blocks and levels. A peek into each condo unit offers a glimpse of the tenants. It waves its claws.
Crab Lovers Farm in Lim Chu Kang set out to be the solution for rearing crabs in land-scarce Singapore, when it was founded in 2017.
Co-founder Sam Chua, 52, felt that it was “urgently necessary” to have the technology to rear crabs, in order to tackle dwindling supply and match global demand.
As the crabs he rears are saltwater crabs, Mr Sam Chua trucks in seawater once every few months in order to ensure his crabs remain healthy.
The entire vertical crab farm can house over 20,000 tenants, with an A3-sized plastic unit allocated for each.
Even by modern condominium standards, that is a squeeze. But these are single apartments, fitted with a toilet that jets the tenants' waste into the drainage.
“Crabs are warriors. They fight. So, if you put them together, there is a good chance that they will eat each other,” explains Mr Chua. He walks through the rows of boxes outside his office. Out of sight lie thousands more.
Mr Chua, 52, used his background in electrical engineering to set up a database that feeds him information on every single unit — from temperature to activity levels.
It takes about six months to grow a crab from an egg until it is ready for sale. Even longer for a larger crab exceeding one kilogramme.
Growing locally could help to reduce attrition during transportation, which Mr Chua estimates kills about 10 percent of crabs per shipment.
With Singapore importing over 90 percent of its food, Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifli called for Singapore to increase local production last year.
In his speech in Parliament, Mr Masagos raised volatility in food supply — including sudden disruptions to transport routes, export bans and the impacts of climate change — as reasons for Singapore to be more self-sufficient.
Aquaculture Innovation Centre's crab-in-a-lab project focuses on rearing crabs in a controlled environment to replenish dwindling populations from major suppliers, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.
Crabs are grown in a controlled indoor environment at the Aquaculture Innovation Centre (AIC) in Temasek Polytechnic — a first in the Republic.
AIC’s assistant director Dr Diana Chan, 56, stresses on the need to create an ideal environment to grow crabs, with the right feed and water.
“There must be science behind it… to provide a good environment that is able to sustain the growth.”
She weaves between the chest-level blue plastic vats clustered on a metal platform in the facility, peering into some. Inside, clear plastic boxes tapped to Styrofoam “floats” swim on the surface, each one housing a palm-sized crab.
Crablets are reared from eggs in the facility's hatchery, and are eventually transferred to saltwater tanks at six to eight months of age. As mud crabs are territorial creatures, plastic boxes like these are used to separate the creatures.
Starting with just a few mud crabs in 2015, the facility has hatched about 300 crabs in the past 15 months.
While still at a developmental stage, the research facility aims to find the right conditions to grow the vital ingredient for chilli crab. This includes nailing the right diet, water conditions and medication for the mud crabs to stay healthy.
The facility grows its own beneficial algae cultures in-house — food for the larval crabs and young crablets growing in the hatchery.
The crabs that grow the largest will be selected for breeding, to produce bigger crabs. Eventually, the goal is to rear crabs that can be served in restaurants.
However, it is a long way before the Republic can start producing its own mud crabs.
The largest lab-grown crab so far weighs around 300g. In comparison, a typical mud crab sold in a restaurant weighs 1kg or more.
Locally-grown crabs do not have a price advantage too, as wholesalers often purchase in bulk from neighbouring countries at a lower price.
“The competition is great, a lot of people will import cheaper and sell,” says Sam Chua. “We cannot keep up in the price war.”
The cost is also driven by the mounting pressure for land space.
Even with its vertical arrangement, crab farming still requires a fair amount of land. Crab Lovers Farm may shift their operations abroad, where land and labour costs are cheaper.
“We are doing business here - we are not doing charity. So, cost is the main driving factor,” says Mr Chua.
Likewise, Dr Chan and her team are looking for a larger land space to scale up production as well, in order to meet the nation’s needs.
“The demand for mud crabs is there. Just take a look at the number of coffee shops with
zi char stalls serving it. They are an integral part of our national dish,” says Dr Chan.
“We want to breed, not just for consumption, but to also conserve this species.”
Chilli/ Coriander
The island has seen a new age of high-tech urban farmers, who toil away in places ranging from HDB community gardens to shopping centre rooftops. Here, herbs and spices like red chilli and coriander can be harvested fresh.
Tomato
Pacific Agro Farms on Bah Soon Pah Road grows several varieties of red vine tomatoes on a mix of earth and coco peat — a plant-growing medium made out of coconut husk.
Mud crab
Crab Lovers Farm grows and sells both flower crab and mud crab. These crabs live in vertical crab “condos” — a way to maximise space in land-scarce Singapore.
Eggs
The largest egg farm on our island, Seng Choon Farm produces around 600,000 eggs daily. Many parts of the farm are “high-tech” — from the customised feed ratios for the chickens, to LED lights that mimic sunrise and sunset.
Soy Sauce
Kwong Woh Hing Sauce Factory is one of the few local soy sauce makers remaining, and has evolved with the times in terms of flavor and packaging. Their sleek bottles can be found online at local design marketplace Naiise.