Somewhere in the vast fishing waters off Australia's northern coast, the hunt is on for the Adams and Eves needed to start a super race of shrimp.
The chosen few will be key to the success of a $1.5 billion plan by Seafarms Group Ltd. to build the largest shrimp farm in the developed world. The biggest challenge isn't digging the 1,000 ponds on a site almost as big as Disney World in Florida, or transporting the shrimp from one of Australia's remotest regions to markets in Asia.
Project Sea Dragon's viability rests on creating in a laboratory in a few years what centuries of natural evolution hasn't achieved. Scientists are attempting to unlock the genome of the Black Tiger prawn to make a super invertebrate that will grow faster, fight disease more effectively and taste better than its free-roaming brethren.