A Taste of Tomorrow: Warehouse Fish Farming
Just after the news came about the demise of the closed containment, land-based fish farming company Local Ocean, another story emerges about an apparently successful business using similar technology. Columnist Bryant Osborn writes about this in an opinion piece in the Culpeper, Virginia- based Star Exponent:
A while back, my son Jason sent me a review of a book titled “The Taste of Tomorrow” by Josh Schonwald. Since July, I have written several columns about subjects raised in the book. In the prologue to Mr. Schonwald’s book, someone walks into a “regular-guyish” Colorado Springs restaurant in the year 2035, and describes what they find on the menu. There is real beef on the menu, but a real burger is $60 and is the most expensive item on the menu. The restaurant also has a burger grown in their bioreactor for $10. As I wrote in last week’s column, in vitro bioreactor-grown meat has a long way to go, and will not be a reality for quite some time.
Also on the menu are several “Catch of the Day” seafood entrées. But Colorado Springs is landlocked and more than 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean. When asked where the seafood comes from, the waitress points to a building across the street. “That is Deep Sea Farms – the largest aqua-farm in Springs.” Seafood raised not in an ocean, but in a building? This must be another far-fetched idea from a long time in the future. But unlike in vitro meat, this one – believe it or not -actually exists today, and is likely to become much more common.
Interest in aquaculture, which is the farming of aquatic organisms, has sky-rocketed in the last twenty years as the stocks of wild fish, crustaceans and mollusks have plummeted from increasing world-wide demand. There is a lot of disagreement about the best approach to aquaculture. Google the word ‘aquapod’ for an example. Josh Schonwald discusses some of the pros and cons to the different approaches in his book, and he tells the story of a Brian O’Hanlon’s attempt to start a deep-sea, open ocean aquafarm. Mr. O’Hanlon needs approval from twenty different government agencies. In the end, he gives up and moves his operation to Panama. This might be one reason that 90% of our seafood is now imported.
But Mr. Schonwald also tells a fascinating story of a guy named Bill Martin who started the world’s largest indoor fish farm. Bill Martin’s Blue Ridge Aquaculture is here in Virginia – in an industrial park right next door to NASCAR’s Martinsville Speedway. It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely place for an aquaculture revolution. Operating out of a retrofitted 100,000 sq. ft. warehouse, Blue Ridge Aquaculture produces 4 million pounds of fish a year, shipping about 15,000 pounds of fish per day. Much of Blue Ridge Aquaculture’s success is due to their choice of fish species: tilapia. Some species are much more suited to aquaculture than others, and Mr. Schonwald calls tilapia, “The Last Perfect Species.” In addition to doing well in captivity and high densities, tilapia thrive on a mostly plant-based diet of corn and soy.
Tilapia are native to the Nile Basin and indigenous to the Sea of Galilee. In Mathew 17:27, Jesus tells Peter to catch a fish with a coin in its mouth, and use the coin to pay the temple tax. The fish was a tilapia, which is why tilapia is also called St. Peter’s fish. In 2000, tilapia was virtually unknown in America. By 2005, it was a fixture at Red Lobster and Costco. By 2010, it was the most popular farmed fish in the country and fifth most consumed seafood. Because they are filter feeders, wild tilapia can pick up “muddy” flavors. When raised in clean water, the meat is soft and flakey with a very mild flavor. Once again, perfect traits. The entire section of “The Taste of Tomorrow” on fish and aquaculture is an interesting read. The Culpeper Library has the book.
