Past studies have shown that the methods used during harvesting farmed prawns can have a significant impact on cooked prawn colour, and hence price of farmed product (Wade et al., 2014). The response of prawns to background colour (Parisenti et al., 2011b; Tume et al.,2009) also suggests that harvesting animals into black bins has the potential to rapidly improve prawn colour, but also that harvesting into white bins may adversely affect cooked prawn colour. The results of the current study demonstrated that post-harvest exposure to different coloured substrates can affect prawn colour