Three handsome twenty-somethings hover and glow like proud parents as they stare into Andy Hanzlik’s outstretched hand. Lying lengthwise across his open palm rests a Litopenaeus vannamei, aka white shrimp, measuring eight inches from head to tail. The behemoth was raised at their Marvesta Shrimp Farms in Hurlock, Md., the product of four years of hard work, sweeping innovation, and unshakable faith.

The entrepreneurs-Guy Furman, Scott Fritze, and Hanzlik, who are now among the world’s premier shrimp farmers-were just twenty-two-years old when they embarked upon their ambitious plan: to raise a whole lotta shrimp in the middle of the Eastern Shore.

First, they did their homework; after nearly eighteen months putting together a business plan, they secured a commercial loan and got to work building a 1,500-foot greenhouse on five acres in Hurlock’s industrial park. Inside, a 180-foot-long, ten-feet-deep tank was filled with salt water and stocked with day-old juvenile shrimp from Florida. Weeks went by, and their hopes soared. Then, on Thanksgiving morning, 2004, they discovered more than 50,000 shrimp floating belly up. The ammonia level had spiked and killed nearly all of their stock. “We were devastated,” says Hanzlik. “That was the point we switched gears and decided to simplify what we were doing. In the past twenty years, a lot of people have tried doing this and failed. We weren’t going to be one of them.”

None of these young men grew up with a dream to become a shrimp wrangler. Furman and Fritze met in second grade; Fritze met Hanzlik at Bucknell University. The two business administration majors were about to graduate, with their eyes on the financial markets. Furman was completing his masters in biology and environmental engineering at Cornell University, where one of his professors was farming tilapia. “No one was making a lot of money off tilapia,” Furman says. “I began thinking about farming shrimp, the most popular shellfish in the U.S.,” he notes. “I liked that no one had put the technology together to raise them. Also, they sell themselves-and at a high price.”

So he drove to Bucknell in 2002 to pitch his idea to his friends. Furman would handle the scientific part of the equation, and Hazlik and Fritze would provide the business expertise. They chose the Eastern Shore for its close proximity to the ocean and several major markets.

Today, Marvesta (mar means ocean, Vesta is the goddess of home and hearth) has grown to five two-story-high greenhouses, where more than 50,000 pounds of healthy, happy shrimp were produced in 2006. What makes their indoor facility unique is that shrimp can be harvested daily, unlike outdoor shrimp farms, which are harvested twice a year and the crop then frozen. In addition, Marvesta doesn’t feed their shrimp any antibiotics, steroids, or hormones, so they qualify as organically grown, very appealing to local chefs. The company provides fresh shrimp to more than fifteen upscale restaurants between Easton, St. Michaels, Annapolis, and Baltimore. “I began buying eight pounds of shrimp a week in August,” says chef Andrew Evans, owner of The Inn at Easton. “They sell really well. The shrimp are very sweet; they’re really sushi quality.”

Furman, Fritze, and Hanzlik are now consumed with a new problem: The demand for their shrimp far exceeds supply. They’re currently looking to relocate and hoping to find a fifty-acre site on the Eastern Shore that can handle fifty greenhouses.

“Marvesta Shrimp Farms is doing something no one else is doing; they are way ahead of the curve in terms of production quality,” says Tom Ziegler, CEO of Zeigler Bros., a longstanding specialized feed company, which supplies Marvesta. “They’ve figured out a way to produce shrimp in a controlled environment and in a cost-effective way, and they’re delivering it fresh to the marketplace. I think this is the future of aquaculture.”

The three shrimp guys agree. “I’m not saying we’re Gutenberg inventing the printing press,” says Fritze, “but we’re pioneering an industry and literally building our business from scratch. The oceans are being depleted, yet here we are producing pampered shrimp. This is Club Med for shrimp.”
For more information, call 410-943-1733 or visit http://www.marvesta.com.