It has been a topsy-turvy year for the aquaculture industry. The specter of Covid-19 continues to haunt the seafood industry as a whole, and aquaculture was no exception. Plus, increased pressure from governments on net-pen aquaculture has hit the salmon industry on multiple continents – Norway proposed a tax hike that upended the industry overnight; the provincial government in British Columbia, Canada, has proposed complete bans on net-pen aquaculture in certain areas; and Chile is debating the future of the industry's continued operation in national reserves.
The five most-read aquaculture stories on SeafoodSource in 2022 reflect the tumultuous year aquaculture has faced – and the still-promising future the industry has in years to come.
Number 5: Black tiger shrimp revival in Asia facing a market challenge
Asia is undergoing a shift from vannamei shrimp farming back to black tiger shrimp farming as competition increases, coupled with lower selling prices and higher production costs, push small-scale farmers to take another look at the less-popular shrimp species.
Black tiger shrimp has been dubbed the “poor farmer’s shrimp” thanks to its relatively fast growth rate and low level of disease. Breeding programs by Charoen Pokphand Foods and Moana Technologies have pushed an increase of its production, with global production rising to 546,000 metric tons in 2021, up from 382,000 metric tons in 2019.
However, that increase in supply needs an equal increase in demand – and a willingness on customers’ parts to pay higher prices. In China, black tiger shrimp is seen as a more-premium product than vannamei, but the U.S. and Northern Europe, along with Japan and the Middle East, have largely shifted away from black tiger to vannamei over the past 15 years.
“While acknowledging that we will likely see a surge of black tiger shrimp production in India and Indonesia, the resurrection might be very short-lived if the producers, feed companies, processors, and their overseas buyers don’t work together to develop the market,” Willem van der Pijl, the founder of consultancy Shrimp Insights and the managing director of the GSF Foundation, said during the Global Shrimp Forum in Utrecht, The Netherlands. “For the revival of black tiger shrimp to be successful, we may not only need to look at the suitable farmer-system-species combination but extend it with the right specification-market combination.”
Number 4: Despite setbacks, Atlantic Sapphire still has big ambitions
Miami, Florida, U.S.A.-based Atlantic Sapphire came into 2022 after a difficult year.
In 2021, the company faced a mass salmon mortality in March, and its Denmark facility then experienced a mortality incident in July – before being hit by a devastating fire in September.
On the heel of those setbacks, Atlantic Sapphire Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Damien Claire told SeafoodSource in January 2022 the company still has big ambitions for its massive 220,000-metric-ton "Bluehouse" salmon recirculating aquaculture system.
Number 3: Seafarms’ Project Sea Dragon “cannot proceed in its current form,” company review finds
A plan to develop a massive AUD 1.45 billion (USD 967 million, EUR 911 million), 10,000-hectare black tiger shrimp farm in Western Australia was deemed “not viable” after a company review of the project.
In November 2021, Seafarms Group’s newly appointed executive chairman and CEO, Mick McMahon, and CFO Ian Brannan initiated a review of the so-called Project Sea Dragon, which was scheduled to be built in several stages. The project struggled to obtain the funding necessary to launch, and the review found the business model the project was relying on was “unproven in Australia” and the current farming operations had “fundamentally underperformed.”
“Project Sea Dragon cannot proceed in its current form – there is no funding to proceed given failure of debt-financing process,” the review said. ”In any event, the project review recommends against proceeding with PSD in its current form – it will not generate acceptable financial returns, the existing scope cannot be completed for targeted costs or achieve target completion dates, and the project currently involves unacceptable risk.”
Number 2: Washington ban makes entire U.S. West Coast off-limits for net-pen finfish aquaculture
The U.S. state of Washington completely banned commercial finfish net-pen aquaculture in late November, via an executive order issued by the Washington Department of Natural Resources.
The momentum behind the decision stemmed from a 2017 incident that involved the collapse of a net-pen farm in Puget Sound operated by Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada-based Cooke Aquaculture which led to the escape of hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon.
Following that escape, Cooke was forced to stop farming non-native species in Washington waters after the Washington legislature passed a law in 2018 requiring any species farmed in state waters be native. Then, despite a NMFS biological opinion released in March 2022 finding net-pen aquaculture has little to no negative impact on native species in Puget Sound, Washington DNR Commissioner Hilary Franz instituted a total ban on net-pen aquaculture.
Since news of the ban broke, Cooke Aquaculture and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe have sued to try and earn a reversal of the ban.
Number 1: Aminor, Buena Vista Seafood tout little-known species as next big thing
The most-read aquaculture story on SeafoodSource in 2022 was about a little-known species that an aquaculture operation in Norway is developing farming techniques for.
Norway-based Aminor is developing farms for the spotted wolffish, Anarchichas minor, and is currently selling products via Buena Vista Seafood in the U.S. The bottom-dwelling species has historically been caught as bycatch of other fisheries, but Aminor discovered its unique traits make it highly suited to aquaculture.
“[We] have considered this as maybe the most-suitable new fish species in Norwegian aquaculture, when it comes to sustainability and all the main criteria,” Aminor Sales and Marketing Director Jan Brekke Jenssen told SeafoodSource.
The species is social by nature, docile, and has favorable feed-conversion ratios. Aminor found that stocking the fish at maximum legal density is actually optimum for mortality rates – recent generations averaged a 1.5 percent mortality rate, and the latest hatch had less than a 0.02 percent mortality rate.
The product, too, was touted by the companies as a high-quality, easy-to-cook fish – which Michelin-starred chefs have already started trying on menus.
“This is new, it’s absolutely new, and it is kind of crazy that we haven’t heard about it before,” Polly Legendre, who work on business development for Buena Vista Seafood, told SeafoodSource.
Photo courtesy of Ranko Maras/Shutterstock
