Protective shells: tiger prawns from Sumatra The prawn farmers belong to a co-operative comprising 224 small-scale producers. They live in small villages on the coast, and are unselfish enough to give some income to help their environment and support the Sumatran Rhino Sanctu­ary, near Lampung. They also participate in the Lampung Green Project, which aims to replant 200,000 mangrove trees on the coast by 2015. The scheme was initiated by British-based Rosida Idriss, who was born in Indonesia. My family were prawn aquaculturists from Surabaya in East Java, and I had helped establish a co-operative there," she says. But in 2005 there was a mudflow disaster which destroyed the prawn farms. We were supplying a German seafood company at the time, and I asked them if they knew of another prawn farming project I could get involved with to find new suppliers. It was suggested that the best areas for this were in Sumatra, and in 2008 I began discussions about creating a formal producer group with the farming community in Lampung. These farms are in the Permatang Pasir region, an area which, at the time of Krakatoa's destruction, would have been reduced to a moonscape. Now the flat coastal area is covered in glossy green vegetation, rice paddy and fruit trees. Sandy roads link the villages where the prawn farmers live in small brick houses, some painted in two colours, some part-clad in rattan. Beside or attached to many of the houses are tall concrete towers with tiny vents in the side. Idriss explains that these are designed to attract swifts, whose saliva nests are the special ingredient in bird's nest soup. The Chinese pay high premiums for the nests, so it is a good additional income for the people here," she says. Idriss has been working with the farmers for four years. She says most do not read or write - 'I have to talk them through all the criteria and regulations so that they can sell to the Western market. The prawns from the Lampung Farming Community are sold exclusively through Marks & Spencer, which also buys prawns from sustainable farms in Honduras. M&S has committed to help the farmers as part of its Plan A ethical initiative, giving them forward orders of large volume and forecasting further orders up to 12 months ahead. It has also helped develop a processing factory that meets its standards, and an ice plant, which is integral to the project. Richard Luney, a technologist who heads the wild fish and aquaculture department of M&S, says he hesitated before becoming involved. I had to have a really good think about the whole project as we are usually driven by suppliers with hi-tech systems and processes. It was the link with the rhino reservation that convinced him. I was blown away by what these farmers were doing in relation to helping protect the rhinos. We worked out that if we bought from them, it would generate enough funds to feed and monitor one of the four rhinos in the sanctuary each year. So far, more than $22,000 has been raised. The Lampung prawns differ greatly from most of the warm-water prawns sold in Britain that have been sourced in south-east Asia. Main­stream tropical prawn farming is acknowledged as an environmental catastrophe, with the precarious ecosystem of the mangrove forests on the coast destroyed to make way for ponds. Prawns are densely packed in the water (up to 150 per cubic metre) and attract disease, so the water is routinely medicated; the prawns also need supplement feed, made from wild fish. The Lampung prawns are loosely stocked, usually fewer than five prawns to every cubic metre of water," Idriss says. 'They are totally self-fed and there's no disease. A natural pesticide is used, made from fermented sugar cane husks, rice husks and green tea. I piggyback on a moped to visit a new plantation of mangrove trees close to the ocean. Mohammed Ibrahim, the head of the Lampung farming co-operative, is clearly proud of this achievement. The mangrove protects our coast from storms and tsunami, adds important nutrients to the fresh water in the ponds, and breathes out oxygen which is good for people," he says. But the startling sight is the harvest, with the farmers using methods unchanged for 300 years. Just before harvest, the pond water is pumped out, revealing the mud. The prawns bury themselves in the mud as the pond is drained, so we have to push them out using reeds," Aris Sugiyono, who owns the pond, says. A line of four men push the bale of reeds through the runny mud, and the prawns, disturbed, jump and wriggle to the surface. There is no mechanical way to pick prawns, only this, which we call ragah," Sugiyono says. The prawns, some are six inches long, are collected in a net, then put immediately into ice water. Small white fish are also collected. These are milk fish, which we can also grow in the ponds. They are a popular food here," Sugiyono adds. Later we eat a feast of simple prawn dishes made with typical Indonesian flavours: galangal, white pepper, tamarind and sweet soy sauce. The cooking is done by Ibrahim's wife, Mirna, and mother-in-law, Becik Made. The women crouch by a griddle over a small round earthen­ware brazier. Just as the primitive harvests seen that day, this is the way they have always cooked. The co-operative's success gives each farming family hope, but the outlook for the rhinoceros species they protect is not as safe. Only three females and one male live in the nearby sanctuary. A second male, known as Andalas, died in April 2011. These solitary, fussy feeders do not breed easily and are the target of poachers wanting only the horn, believed to be a cure-all, and selling for $65,000 a kilo. One of the females, Ratu, is pregnant, however. Visiting the sanctuary, I am not allowed near her but instead admire the small but powerfully built frame of Bina, behind the solid fence of her jungle enclosure. Poaching is a big issue since we have started the protection programme," Widodo Ramono, who runs the sanctuary, says. We have found snares and have to keep watch constantly. His team of armed rangers must camp out nightly in the jungle, among the monkeys - and also in the company of Sumatran tigers. So much has returned here since 1883: the population and forest, rare species and now a sustainable farming system. The consequences, of the last, like Krakatoa, are being felt in Britain, but in a positive way. In Lampung they hope to feel similar after-effects once the British fall in love with the story of their prawns.