Shrimply Blue: A Mission to Restore Lake Tahoe's Clarity

Shrimply Blue:

A Mission to Restore Tahoe’s Lake Clarity

By Madison Schultz, Chief News Editor, IVCBA

OUTDOOR ACTIVITY IS CONSTANTLY BUSTLING in Tahoe communities, and many locals share their outdoor adventures with their four-legged best friend. However, what comes with an influx of human activity, comes with loss of lake clarity.

In such a flourishing, dog-friendly community, Yuan Cheng, president and founder of Shrimply Blue has found a way to help restore Tahoe’s lake clarity, while also serving fido his much-deserved treats.

“I just finished my MBA program at UC Davis, and for my graduating project you typically work with a company, so I worked with the Tahoe Environmental Research Center,” Cheng said. “The [TERC] said to us ‘there is invasive shrimp in the lake, they’re high in Omega-3, were trying to get rid of them, but what can we do with them?’”

After working with five other MBA students and TERC, Cheng and his team came up with the plan to harvest invasive Mysis shrimp, to then repurpose them into healthy dog treats. While just starting out, the small nonprofit is diving headfirst into production, and is already in the process of testing out the dog treats and further analyzing their health benefits; to assure dog owners that they’re safe and delicious for your furry friends to enjoy.

The process to harvest Mysis shrimp is completed through mid-water trawling, which is when boat vessels are out on the lake and catch invasive shrimp with a large net off the vessel. The key to harvesting the Mysis is that they congregate mid-water, which allows them to be targeted without negatively influencing other dynamics of the lake. After the shrimp are caught, they would then be sent to a processing facility to be manufactured into the all-natural dog treats that Shrimply Blue is creating.

“From a nutritional profile, these [treats] are really what I think dog owners are already looking for,” Cheng said. “On a dry basis, the Mysis shrimp are 58% protein, they’re total lipid content is 22%, and 32% of that is Omega-3.”

Though these Mysis shrimp do have hearty health benefits, Shrimply Blue is taking it one step further, and actively testing new recipes as well as curating ways to extend the lifespan of these dog treats.

“My main role is to help make the dog treats by creating the recipes, testing shelf-life, and running microbial and quality control tests to ensure that they are safe,” said Bisma Parwez, Shrimply Blue co-founder. Parwez is a fourth-year UC Davis Food Science & Technology student.

Parwez and other food science team members have been actively making sure that these treats are safe by running extensive testing to ensure high quality nutrition standards. Parwez said the company is focused on an all-natural product that promotes health and happy canines.

Aside from the positive health benefits that these treats have, the mission behind Shrimply Blue is to “Restore Lake Tahoe’s clarity through dog treats.” But, Cheng says, beyond lake clarity, they are also focused on Lake Tahoe’s larger ecosystem.

“Tahoe’s water clarity used to be 102 feet, and the latest measurement has declined by nearly 40%,” Cheng said. “Global warming and increase in algae growth are things we really want to avoid moving forward. Lake Tahoe is such an iconic and beautiful lake, and we think it’s important to bring it back to what it once was. It’s amazing that by restoring Tahoe’s ecosystem, we can help the lake almost restore itself and its water clarity –

so that’s really our pull,” Cheng said.

While dog treat tasting and testing is currently in the works, the startup’s goal is to trawl Emerald Bay by the fall of 2021.

“Emerald Bay makes a really strong case study because though it’s attached to Lake Tahoe, the Mysis there are isolated, and they don’t intermingle,” Cheng said. “This means you can very quickly effect the population of Emerald Bay because it’s smaller – and you can very quickly see what the ripple effect/s to the ecosystem are going to look like.”

Cheng also noted that in 2012 TERC saw the Mysis in Emerald Bay disappear, and very quickly noticed that Daphnia, native plankton, come back, and water clarity get restored.

“The idea for us is to start on Emerald Bay, trawl the Mysis there, and reproduce what happened in 2012,” Cheng said. “After trawling, we expect the Daphnia to come back within a year, and water clarity to improve within two years.”

Considering that Shrimply Blue is a small nonprofit just starting out, it has an exciting roadmap to success ahead. It is looking for community support and engagement to get this project to flourish and become successful. Shrimply Blue staff members are excited to get further involved with the Tahoe surrounding communities in-person when physically meeting is considered safe once again.

Though the treats directly benefit the pooches, the nonprofit isn’t intending to stop by only servicing the dogs; in fact, Shrimply Blue also has some great benefits for local community members as well.

“As this project scales up on Lake Tahoe, eventually it could be up to 8–10 vessels trawling the lake just at night for Mysis shrimp, so the other piece of this [project] that is positive is that we’re adding to the local economy,” Cheng said. “We needed a really unique way for the local economy and jobs to be tied to the environmental aspect of Tahoe, so that’s another added benefit.”

Cheng also notes that the nonprofit has been doing everything it can to keep things local, help the local economy, and making this project feel like it’s happening alongside the local communities.

Shrimply Blue board member, Roger de Lusignan, volunteered to help with fundraising efforts. He says he is excited to find funding in local North Lake communities to keep the momentum going around this project.

“We’re reaching out to the homeowners associations, were trying to identify high net-worth individuals that have an interest in the lake, and we are needing a corporate sponsor,” de Lusignan said.

Right now, the nonprofit is still in the early stages, and though Shrimply Blue has a strong path to success, they need all the community support that’s available to them.

“We are putting in extensive efforts to do all the right things, we just need all the community support,” de Lusignan said.

To help support Shrimply Blue, local Lake Tahoe communities are encouraged to:

Make a donation and help Shrimply Blue raise funds to clear Emerald Bay this year.

Sign up to learn more about Shrimply Blue’s dog treats.

Contact the Shrimply Blue team to volunteer and join the effort of restoring Lake Tahoe’s water clarity.

If you’re interested in donating, volunteering, or following along with Shrimply Blue, visit: www. shrimplyblue.org/subscribe, or follow the team on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest at the handle: @ShrimplyBlue.