Apart from a decade of undergraduate teaching, my professional life has been directly or tangentially devoted to mangrove issues. Strife in my native Mindanao pushed my family and me to the peace and quiet of Panay Is. in central Philippines and to research on marine shrimp, the commercial superstars of the mangrove macrobenthos. My early focus was on broodstock development, larval rearing and pond grow-out of penaeids, mainly the mangrove-associated giant tiger prawn Penaeus monodon and the white shrimp P. indicus: Because brackishwater ponds are the dominant aquaculture system in the Philippines, species whose rearing requirements mimic the estuarine habitat, e.g., fluctuating salinity levels, have become the crops of choice. Published papers from this period include a classification of P. monodon egg quality types (Fig. 1: Primavera and Posadas 1981) which allows hatchery technicians to predict larval numbers and the corresponding tank water volume to prepare.