In the past, metapenaeus ensis, which was sold in the market, was mostly wild shrimp. Nowadays, in metapenaeus ensis, freshwater breeding and seawater culture are generally adopted, and they are basically cultured varieties.

Strictly speaking, metapenaeus ensis is not the name of shrimp, but a way of shrimp culture. In the coastal areas of southern China, people will build dikes around fields in order to prevent floods. Some shrimps prefer the environment with low salinity in shallow water, and will climb to these dikes to eat food while the sea is rising, so they become "shrimps in the enclosure".