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All Caught Up In Ocean Farming
By TRISTAN BAURICK Staff Writer
(First of two parts)
With 800 mechanical arms in rapid motion, the looms in a cavernous Day Road warehouse roar as they spin a patented net that has ensnared what some believe could be the future of marine farming.
“We’ve seen the disasters of fish farming – the waste, the concentration, the pollution,” said ocean engineer Langley Gace as looms in 6-foot-wide pits churned out a batch of nets bound for a Hawaiian fish farm. “We’ve come into this wiser.”
Gace designs and markets “sea stations” crafted by NET Systems, which has manufactured netting for over 26 years on the island.
While fishing boats have been the traditional mainstay for NET Systems, the company has found itself at the forefront of a burgeoning off-shore aquaculture industry.
Unlike shallow, coast-hugging pens common in existing fish farms, NET System’s sea stations are fully submerged at depths of over 40 feet and are commonly set 2 miles from shore. The stations resemble flying saucers, with a horizontal steel rim encircling a central spar.
The netting, made from a polyethaline fiber used in bullet-proof vests, is stretched along the station’s frame to hold over a hundred thousand fish.
In 10 years, offshore fish farms have cropped up across the globe, with NET Systems supplying most of the cages.
“That’s our niche,” said Gace. “We have cages in Spain, Portugal, China, Korea, the Caribbean. The growth potential is huge.”
It’s simple supply and demand that’s driving much of aquaculture’s off-shore development. As consumer demand for seafood increases, wild stock has plummeted.
Overfishing is blamed for much of the decline in wild fish and other seafood. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, commercial fishing has pushed 75 percent of fisheries worldwide to the brink of depletion or far beyond healthy limits.
Any increase in supply will have to come from a boost in aquaculture, say top officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
While farm-raised fish may recharge supply, aquaculture is not without its detractors.
Each year, millions of farm-raised fish escape from pens and compete with wild varieties for food.
They also edge into spawning grounds, adding a domesticated strain to the wild gene pool.
Near-shore fish farms are also blamed for increased pollution.
According to a University of Washington study, salmon net pens in 1997 were responsible for over 90 percent of the total amount of visible solids in Puget Sound.
“We’ve learned from these types of farming, and we offer something different,” said Gace.
With NET System’s sea stations, fish wastes that often foul waters at coastal pens are flushed away by strong off shore currents
“We have our cages a half-mile out in 200 feet of water,” said Neil Sims, president of Kona Blue, an aquaculture operation in Hawaii. “The current travels briskly out there and keeps the waters pristine.”
Sea stations spend most days submerged, protecting them from storms that can damage nets and allow farm-raised fish to escape.
A sea station owned by Cates International fared better in a Pacific storm than the company’s fishing boats.
“While the storm was taking place, I did not worry about our fish cages,” said the company’s president, John Cates. “I did have to worry about our boats in the harbors and all of our homes. We did not lose any fish in the weather and did our normal harvest.”
According to Gace, the sea stations derive much of their resilience from his company’s patented netting. Rather than hooking each strand together, NET Systems weaves strands at the linking point.
“It’s not linked the way you might link your fingers,” Gace said, hooking his index fingers together. “With our nets, its weaved straight through. It’s much stronger when it’s linear.”
The nets are composed of Dutch-made Dyneema, an artificial, plastic-like fiber stronger than equal diameter steel, according to Gace.
Once the custom-crafted nets spill from the looms, they are covered in a bonding agent that repels sand and ultraviolet rays.
The company uses a complex system to stretch and fit the net using heat, wenches, jigs and laser-guided measurements.
“It’s not not easy to do,” said Gace. “We have a 20-page manual that we keep close. It’s proprietary. Our competition would like to copy it.”
Over 30 sea stations are in use around the world, with many more on order. Prices range from $120,000 to $180,000. The larger, more expensive models tower at nearly 70 feet, with enough capacity for 140,000 fish.
Future sea stations may grow to three times the size of today’s versions with surface crew quarters and gas-powered propellers.
But, until then, Gace is content to craft a product that is still on the cutting edge.
“We do all sorts of things here for all kinds of purposes,” he said. “We make the fishing nets in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, the nets in hockey so the puck doesn’t fly out and nets on ferries so your car doesn’t fall off.
“Now we’re doing something that, until we came along, couldn’t be done – and that’s something, especially because it’s from here. It’s a tangible product from Bainbridge Island. It’s not just ‘Made in the USA,’ it’s ‘Made in Bainbridge.’”
(Second of two parts)
A Kona Kampachi by any other name just isn’t the same.
Under the moniker “kahala,” this Hawaiian fish has spent its life roving coastal areas, absorbing a potent marinade of naturally-occuring reef toxins that would make your typical dinner guest go belly up.
But under the Kona Blue aquaculture company’s trademarked name, Kona Kompachi is not only safe to eat, but has found a high-priced home in some of Tokyo and Seattle’s finest restaurants.
“Most fishermen, when they catch this fish, they curse and throw it back,” said Neil Sims, president of the Hawaii-based company. “But we’ve had such a tremendous demand since our first harvest last September. It was an easy sell – just one taste, and the scales fall from people’s eyes and they see the light.”
That light likely would have never shone had it not been for one Bainbridge islander’s innovation.
Gary Loverich, who founded the NET Systems company on Bainbridge Island’s Day Road 26 years ago, was tinkering with the idea of building fish farming pens portable enough to move between deep and shallow waters.
But the first floating “sea station” he crafted in 1994 did more than that – it allowed fish farmers to fully submerse their stock as far as 12 miles out to sea.
“I was thinking of an easy way to transport fish growing in the Strait of Juan de Fuca,” Loverich said. “All of a sudden the idea clicked. I don’t know where ideas come from. Sometimes they just explode in your mind.”
Loverich established Ocean Spar LLC to design, market and sell the sea stations while NET Systems manufactures and assembles the product.
At first, fish farmers scoffed at the UFO-shaped cages. Because salmon require surface access to recharge their air bladders, many aquaculture operations bypassed the Loverich’s invention.
“Basically, they were thinking in a straight line,” Loverich said. “They were thinking ‘what good is it if you can’t raise salmon in it?’ But then people started thinking about other fish.”
Sims was one of them. As a marine biologist, Sims had been experimenting with new ways to grow and harvest pearl-bearing oysters after a “depressing existence” managing traditional fish farms.
“I wanted to find a way to marry a commercial venture with an environmental imperative,” he said. “And I wanted to do it right.”
Sims found the big business of aquaculture was missing a sincere concern for the industry’s environmental impacts.
Fish farms are often located in protected bays where wastes don’t easily flush away, creating “dead zones” where other aquatic animals struggle to live.
Common farming practices also include raising fish near the water’s surface, making cages easy prey for storms. Damaged cages have released millions of farm-raised fish, diluting the wild populations and spreading disease, some environmentalists charge.
In Ocean Spar’s sea stations, Sims found an answer to these concerns, and more.
“We started experimenting with what the locals call the kahala,” he said. “We found that by putting them in the stations in the open ocean and away from the reefs, we could improve the water quality and have an amazing product.”
Renamed the Kona Kampachi, Sims began shipping the fish to markets along the Pacific rim. Business has been so good in the first year that Kona Blue has ordered two more stations to add to the four it already owns. About 10 percent of the harvest is sent to Japan, about 25 percent is sold in Hawaii and the rest is shipped to the continental United States.
Chefs in Hawaiian sushi bars were the first to swear by the fish’s creamy texture and long shelf life.
“I think the next big fish is farm-raised kampachi,” said Hawaiian sushi guru Alan Wong. “It’s a good sashimi eating fish with an increasingly high fat content, so it’s pretty versatile.”
According to Sims, Kona Kampachi have a 30 percent fat content. The wild kahala variety have just 3 percent.
“In this culture, we’re learning (fish) fat has tremendous health benefits,” Sims said. “It’s loaded with Omega-3 (fatty acids), which are good for the heart.”
Sims is also proud of the methods he uses to raise the fish. He fattens the fish with a “sustainable feed” comprised of about 50 percent anchovy meal and fish oil from sustainably-managed fisheries and 50 percent vegetable-based protein.
Growing fish to feed other fish isn’t the perfect model for sustainability, Sims admits - but it’s moving in the right direction.
“It’s not sustainable in general terms, but it is scalable,” he said. “And we’re doing more in that direction. “We want to move away from using any wild fish for feed and use more grains and trimmings from other fisheries.”
Loverich enjoys seeing his invention used by other innovators. Besides Kona Blue, other Hawaiian aquaculture operations are putting sea stations for unique harvests. Cates International of Hawaii is raising the rare moi, a fish that was once a treasured property fit only for the bellies of island kings.
“I created the sea station to be a tool,” said Loverich. “It happens to be a tool for producing fish flesh. But what people are doing with it is unique and is creating something valuable - which is really cool.”
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