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Ref:599/03 |
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united states
- Mar 14, 2003 |
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Only Aquaculture Can
Supply Future Demand for Fish
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SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [Cape Cod Times - Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News via COMTEX]
BOSTON--A threesome stopped in front of a Taiwanese
aquaculture booth at the Boston International Seafood
Show on Wednesday. A large photo of a
barracuda-like fish hung on the curtain behind an
Asian woman dishing out small plastic cups of firm
pinkish-white fillets.
Ignoring the wasabi horseradish paste and soy sauce,
the man fingered a plastic cup of farm-raised cobia.
'Cobia,' he said. 'I think my mother had a
sister-in-law named Cobia.'
Two million pounds of cobia are caught by recreational
fishermen around the world each year, but it's not
exactly a household word around here. Still, the
market for firm, white and basically tasteless meat is
huge in North America. If aquaculturalists have their
way, cobia will join the once unknown tilapia fish
which is a South American fish that is becoming more
popular on market shelves.
Aquaculture, or farm-raising fish, was a large focus
of the three-day seafood show at the Hynes Convention
Center this week. Of 750 booths, which showcased
everything from fried 'gator to lumpfish, 95 featured
aquaculture efforts.
Historically, most fish have been caught in the wild.
But wild stocks worldwide are dwindling, with many of
them overfished. United Nations' Food and Agriculture
Organization reports show that, despite increased
efforts by fishermen, wild harvests have stayed
relatively flat since 1991.
The same reports show aquaculture steadily increasing
year after year with a 52 percent surge predicted by
2030, when farm-raised fish harvests are expected to
surpass those caught in the wild.
Howard M. Johnson, a seafood marketing analyst, used
U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics that track
seafood consumption to predict that the U.S. market
will require an additional 1.1 billion pounds of
seafood by 2020. Johnson, who chaired a panel on the
farm-raised fish of the future, said he believes that
only aquaculture can fill that need.
'It's the only place it can come from. You're not
going to fill that need from capture fisheries,
they're pretty much maxxed out,' he said.
People involved in aquaculture are trying to find the
next salmon, he said. Once considered a luxury fish
with a high cost, salmon ended up being the perfect
fish to raise in big pens anchored in shallow inshore
waters.
Salmon had name recognition and a body that yielded a
thick piece of meat in automated filleting machines.
Salmon farms in the sheltered bays of northern Maine
almost single-handedly propelled Maine to become the
Northeast's top commercial fishing state. In 2000,
salmon harvests from farms were worth $78.9 million,
third behind wild species of lobster and scallops.
But competition from South American fish farmers with
lower overhead and government subsidies caused a glut
on the salmon market, and in 2001 the harvest was
worth just $58.2 million.
Johnson said likely suspects for fish farmers looking
to diversify include barramundi, an Australian reef
fish; Chinese perch; Vietnamese snakehead fish, which
feeds on rice hulls, breathes air and walks across
land to find water.
Freshwater exotic fish are usually raised in inland
tanks or raceways, but the big dough is in fish like
salmon, which can be grown in offshore pens. With wild
stocks of New England and Europe's bread-and-butter
species such as cod, haddock and flounder still on the
road back from historically low levels,
aquaculturalists are looking to that market.
Johnson said he has heard figures estimating an
aquaculture harvest of 600,000 to 700,000 metric tons
of cod worldwide by 2015, surpassing the wild catch.
But the path to aquaculture riches is fraught with
problems.
Dealing with disease, environmental issues and
fluctuating costs, such as fish feed, can erode the
profit margin.
Ken Hirtle of Heritage Salmon in Newfoundland, Canada,
told the audience Wednesday that his company had spent
millions of dollars and eight years of research on
raising haddock and still didn't know if it was
commercially viable.
(C) 2003, Cape Cod
Times. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business
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