Monday, March 11, 2013

Aching Feet and Cool Seafood Eats

Here at the Boston Internation Seafood Show, I'm finally sitting down to have a Pepsi after being on my feet and chasing down tastings of the free seafood of every type and sort being peddled by producers, wholesales and processors.

I had shrimp, octopus, and Atlantic salmon, with sweet and sour and hot sauces as well as this nice cold Pepsi.

I'm here for two preset interviews with Brian O'Hanlon of Cobia farm Open Blue in Panama, and Chilian Atlantic Salmon farmer Scott Nichols, director of Verlasso.

"We are excited about a new hatchery we are building on site," O'Hanlon told New England Aquafarmer. "We would like to build in redundancies and consistencies we figured out in the smaller old hatchery."

"The hatchery we use is a closed containment Recirc. System with broodstock 2 generations old before we allow eggs and spermage to produce our fingerlings for farming," Scott Nichols explained to New England Aquafarmer.

I was interested in these two farms because of their efforts in producing fish with a keen eye to sustainability--closed system recirc. facilities and contained farm technology that maintains a 0-percent release ratio.

What's unique about both for me is both farms are led by Americans who took their know-how and technologies out of country because of the slow-to-start policies in place and consumer attitudes in the air around aquaculture. Both are moving in the right direction these days but taking forever to catch up with the rest of the world, where we import 95-percent of our seafood consumed here in the U.S.A. Over 70 percent of that is farmed overseas and growing.

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