Volume 20 Issue 2 MARCH/APRIL 2019
2019
PROFILE
Yellowtail borne from research to RAS BY MARI-LEN DE GUZMAN
ingfish Zeeland, based in The Netherlands, is ready to take its high-value RAS-grown Dutch Yellowtail (Seriola lalandi) to the North American market with plans to establish a production facility in the United States this year. Kees Kloet, Kingfish Zeeland’s chief operating officer, tells Hatchery International that his company is scoping out prospective locations in the U.S. to set up shop. It plans to build a land-based production facility with an initial capacity of 4,000 tons of Yellowtail Kingfish. Kloet, however, declined to provide further detail of the location until his company has finalized and identified the site of the planned facility. Kingfish Zeeland already sells its Yellowtail Kingfish to the U.S. market, but the growing market demand for this sashimi-grade, high-end product is creating further growth opportunities. As with many intercontinental product transactions the costs can be significant. “What we have learned is that the market is big and it’s growing fast and there’s lots of opportunities,” Kloet
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Global RAS professionals to gather in D.C. at RAStech 2019
says. “Like everybody else, we run into all the costs for air transport and importation and... the most logical step is to move here and start producing over here.” R&D TO REALITY
The beginnings of Kingfish Zeeland could be traced to a research and development project with Wageningen University in The Netherlands. The company was founded in 2015 and, with technology from Billund Aquaculture, began constructing a 5,000-sq.m. RAS farm along the Oosterschelde marine estuary in the province of Zeeland. “We are guaranteed pure quality of intake water,” Kloet says. Current production capacity at the facility is at 520 tons per year, but the company plans to grow that capacity to 1,000 tons this year, and to 4,000 tons by 2020. To ensure consistent supply of quality eggs, Kingfish Zeeland built two hatcheries – one dedicated for production and the other for R&D purposes, mainly for broodstock selection and feed production.
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SUSTAINABILIT Y
Saving Japan’s wild salmon population Exploring ways for hatcheries to give species a fighting chance for survival BY BONNIE WAYCOTT
eading RAS experts from around the world are speaking at RAStech 2019, the premier conference for recirculating aquaculture systems happening on May 13 and 14 in Washington, D.C. Formerly the International Conference on Recirculating Aquaculture, RAStech 2019 features a line-up of education sessions designed to provide the latest in RAS research, technology development, best practices and implementation. “Whether you are a current user of RAS technology or considering implementing a RAS project, or even thinking about investing in this market, you will find this event very relevant to you,” says David Kuhn, associate professor in the aquaculture research and extension programs, department of food science and technology at Virginia Tech.
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WE MADE A MISTAKE ! WHOOPS! ON OUR 2019 CALENDAR. Due to a production and editing error, our 2019 calendar included incorrect dates for December 2019 so we've included a new calendar with this issue to replace it. We regret any inconvenience this has caused. If you’ve already marked up your existing 2019 calendar, may we suggest that you simply cut out the month of December from the new correct calendar and glue it on top of December on the old one. Being creative hatchery professionals, we know you probably have already thought of this, but just in case you haven’t had your morning coffee yet.
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he mass release of farm-hatched fish to supplement wild populations and increase harvest has been practiced across the world. In Japan, the northernmost island of Hokkaido has been home to Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) hatchery programs since the late 19th century. Between the late 1970s to the end of the 1980s, chum salmon (O. keta) populations increased exponentially, coinciding with enhanced hatchery technology and improvements in marine survival due to favorable climate and ocean conditions. In the 1990s, hatchery populations contributed up to 50 percent of total returns of chum salmon in the Pacific. Today, some commercial fisheries in Hokkaido, such as the Hokkaido Island Chum Salmon Fishery, rely almost exclusively on hatchery production to meet their catch targets.
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< Professor Masahide Kaeriyama of the Arctic Research Center at Hokkaido University
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