Whether mainstream restaurant menus will eventually offer little-known species with curious names like snakehead depends on several factors. Name recognition is one hurdle, but marketers have a demonstrated agility overcoming that one; witness the popularity of cape shark (a re-branded spiny dogfish) and ocean catfish (Atlantic wolf fish). The perennial quip at the Seafood Show is, when it comes to selling seafood in the Northeast – domain of cod and haddock – “Less Is Better: skinless, boneless, and tasteless.”
Selecting the species to which a company will ultimately have to commit troves of resources requires serious upfront investment in planning, research and development. Even if that yields the perfect choice, profitable acceptance by mainstream seafood buyers can still take a decade or more.
Two panelists at the Seafood Show shared the exhaustive process they went through to arrive at their chosen species. Ken Hirtle, vice president of marketing and sales at aquaculture firm Heritage Salmon LTD, said his company’s choice needed to complement its salmon product line without competing with it. It also had to fit well in the company’s distribution network of eastern Canada and the U.S. including northern New York. For these and other reasons, they chose to farm haddock.
Hirtle said his company began exploring the viability of raising other species when the farmed salmon market became saturated and prices dropped. Today – eight years later – Heritage’s decision to attempt the commercial production of cultured haddock is one that the company evaluates constantly. “Haddock still hasn’t proven that it will make it for the long haul,” said Hirtle. He cited ongoing challenges that materialized along the way: newly hatched haddock, which are almost invisible, must be fed for 58 days on live zooplankton raised in a separate sterile environment. The haddock’s metabolism shut down during the January through March cold season, and the fish stopped feeding – and growing – Hirtle said he wasn’t sure wild haddock behave similarly.
Processing offered hard lessons too. The average weight of a Heritage haddock is about four pounds, but Hirtle said that could double in the next ten years. The company’s mechanized salmon filleting machinery proved inefficient on haddock due to haddock’s large head and body cavity. Haddock has a lower yield than salmon as well – about 32 percent of the fish’s weight – and each 8-12 ounce fillet must be J-cut by hand.
Panelist Dr. Nathalie Le François, a research scientist from the Université du Quebec à Rimouski, led a team that screened 45 species to arrive at a very different preference: wolf fish. Their selection process began seven years ago; it has matured from the research and development stage to one in which the province and private sector ventures are seeking investment and technology transfer partnerships with enterprises in Europe, Iceland and Newfoundland that already farm wolf fish. Norway, for example, is currently producing 100 tons/year of wolf fish for the European market.
It’s doubtful that anyone who has ever been face to face with a wolf fish will ever forget the experience. But if the homely fish needs to overcome substantial name and visual challenges in the supermarket, the species has many other attractive assets – not all of which have to do with being eaten. Le François’ team uncovered many attributes of wolf fish that made it an attractive choice for cultivation in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The species can withstand the region’s extreme cold and warm seasonal temperature fluctuations. Wolf fish have antifreeze proteins that Le François thinks could eventually be exploited for use in cryopreservation and food processing, and the film on wolf fish skin has antimicrobial properties that could someday have commercial applications.
Le Fran̤ois commented that a single skin currently fetches $15 Рfar more than the value of the meat. Wolf fish skin is so tough it already has commercial applications. Le Fran̤ois showed pictures of wolf fish skin shoes and a stylish vest tailored from the yellow and black-spotted skin of the spotted wolf fish that drew appreciative remarks from the panel and audience.
Wolf fish also won the award in 2000 in the Boston Seafood Show’s New Product sampling contest, so despite the animal’s ugly appearance, Le François said the meat has highly desirable white, firm characteristics.
Wolf fish can be raised in sea cages, but Le François said the species grows well in tanks on land – a significant point considering that the key aquaculture concerns environmentalists raise have to do with water quality, disease and escapes. Le François showed a photo of a long, land-based “raceway” tank stocked with wolf fish at extremely high densities. Le François said under those conditions it is possible to grow a nine-pound fish in 36 months. She also suggested that farm raised wolf fish might someday be used to enhance wild stocks. Canada has seen a 93 percent decline in stocks in recent years.
It’s said that to make a small fortune in aquaculture, you start with a huge fortune. While fish farming panelists detailed substantial risks, they also pointed out long-term advantages. In the end, they agreed, consumers benefit from a year-round and stable supply of consistent, quality product. Growers can harvest when demand is high and wild harvesters are shore-bound because of regulations or weather.
Concluding her remarks, Le François gave voice to what many other entrepreneurs were probably thinking. “What Quebec’s mariculture process needs now is a success story,” said Le François. Money is scarce, but looking at the long run demographic and economic trends, demand for seafood will only increase. While large-scale industrial farming will never be cheap, investors watching that long-range outlook might eventually take up their own search to find “the fish of the future.”