IPB University Lecturer Reveals Freshwater Lobster Storage without Water Medium
Freshwater lobster is a type of introductory freshwater prawn originated from Australia. Countries that frequently imported these lobsters are Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, USA; and few European Union countries. Freshwater lobsters are marketed alive. If sell at dead state, the price could go down as far as 50%. That's why they require special transportation method so the lobsters are still alive when handed to consumers.
Typically, lobsters transportation uses wet transportation system where water is the medium. But this system cannot last long and survive short distances. Thus, new transportation technique that last long and could reach far distances is needed. One of it is water-less transportation.
Transportation without water medium is a choice to distribute freshwater lobster, that takes more time in distribution, especially for export purposes. Freshwater lobster without water medium are immotilized by low temperature dosing.
"Medium used for storage in water-less distribution is the packaging. The tool used for packing the lobster alive is styrofoam, and the material used are cold sawdust, newspaper, and packed ice shards." Said Prof. Dr. Ir. Nurjanah, Professor of Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science.
The lecturer of IPB University's Aquatic Product Technology Department added that carriage in transportation, especially export distribution, the more product carried by a transport, the smaller if is for the unused room to exist. Addition of racks inside the transport hopefully could increase the compactness of lobster distributed.
Right now, Professor Nurjanah with Ruddy Suwandi and Anggi Novriani have studied about the effectiveness of using racks to increase compactness in freshwater lobster distribution without water medium. They also studied on how the lobster behaved and packaging media temperature changes pattern during storage.
According to the study, Professor Nurjanah explained, "The usage of acrylic racks could produce the life passing of freshwater lobster to 100% up for 50 hours of storage. Acrylic rack could reduce the movement of the lobster during packaging. Transferred lobster to aquarium immediately shows life sign by simple movements, air bubbles excretion, backward swimming, and moving legs to remove sawdust on the carapace." Said Professor Nurjanah.( IAAS/KRH)
