Puyallup, Washington, U.S.A.-based seafood importer and distributor Wheeler Seafood has debuted offerings of Sealand Advanced Aquaculture's Patagonia king salmon.
Wheeler has been named the official North American vendor for the Puerto Montt, Chile-based company, which is the world's only company producing king salmon in a recirculating aquaculture system.
"Patagonia king salmon [marks] a new chapter for RAS seafood sold in North America," Wheeler Seafood Managing Partner Bill Bradford told SeafoodSource. "Patagonia king salmon's 'Forward Farming' [approach] minimizes environmental impact by eliminating the possibility for fish escape, sea lice, and sea bottom waste. These are just some of the many progressive attributes that speak to the most sustainably minded consumers."
Sealand began operating its RAS system in September 2021, following four years of scientific research and testing, during which the company bred the fish from wild Patagonian stock. King salmon aren't native to Chile, but the company's broodstock come from the descendents of fish that were introduced into Chilean waters in the 1990s.
The company feeds its fish a diet of krill, fishmeal, and fish oil. It is currently implementing a plan to replace its traditional fish oil with an increasing percentage of insect nutrients derived from the larvae of soldier flies. The percentage of insect-derived nutrients in the oil it uses in its feed is currently around 40 percent, and Sealand eventually hopes to up that figure to 100 percent, according to Wheeler.
The feed for Sealand’s farm is provided by one of its subsidiaries: Natpro, which produces insect-based salmon feed. That feed – together with the RAS land-based system – puts the company at the forefront of the circular salmon-farming movement, according to Bradford.
Photo courtesy of Wheeler Seafood
