Salmon farmer sees huge market for kings of the ocean

What King Salmon is proposing is a staged development of two end-to-end farms.

Each would be 200m wide by

500m long, which includes 10 pens and a feed barge. Beneath are moorings which take each farm’s size to 1.5km long and

1.2km wide, though these can’t be seen. The Cawthron Institute said the proposal area covers 1800ha of water space.

Each set of pens would comprise up to eight plastic circles with a circumference of up to 200m each. The water at the site ranges from 60m to 165m deep. The pens would descend about 30m, and would be designed to minimise whale interaction.

In salmon farming, the number one cost is feed. It’s also what critics and the public want to know about because of the effects of waste — on the seafloor, on marine life and as an attraction for sharks, other fish, and seabirds.

King Salmon’s application says there will be a maximum discharge of up to 1000 tonnes of feed a year — into each pen.

That compares with 4500 tonnes for the total Clay Point farm and 5500 tonnes for the Te Pangu farm, King Salmon’s biggest farms, in Tory Channel.

Fully stocked, the planned pens would host 100,000 fish apiece, Currently, there are about

65,000 fish per pen at Clay Point and Te Pangu.

The RMA application said each pen would produce about

500 tonnes of fish.

There would be cameras under the pens. As soon as the fish stop feeding, the supply is turned off, says King Salmon.

Feed pellets are imported from Tasmania because the industry here isn’t big enough to support a factory. According to Consumer NZ, a major part of a farmed salmon’s diet comes from abattoir by-products.

Rosewarne says the company tries to feed fish as close as possible to a natural diet, with protein, lipids and minerals. King Salmon does not use antibiotics and Rosewarne says sea lice, the bane of overseas salmon farms, are not a problem here.

Being fattened in the Cook Strait pens would be the king of king salmon, the rare giant tyee.

In British Columbia, where the species originated, “tyee” means “chief ”. The fish grow to more than 13.5kg compared to 5kg for an average king salmon, and are sought after by chefs and diners for their large cuts, texture, colour and omega oil content.

The Cook Strait-farmed tyee will head for Michelin-starred and other top restaurants overseas.

“They’re the Wagyu beef of the sea and we sell it for the same price as bluefin tuna,” says Rosewarne. “If we can produce more tyee it will help take the pressure of the bluefin tuna fishery.

“We think our [king] sales potential is about 360,000 tonnes a year — though we won’t get to that in my lifetime or my children’s lifetime. Right now we produce 8000 tonnes. But there are massive opportunities overseas and the margins are excellent.”