THANKS TO TANKS
Aquaculture is the solution to feeding our appetite for ocean fish, writes Richard Holmes
It’s rare to see kabeljou on a restaurant menu these days. Wild-caught fish are orange- or redlisted by the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI), so most chefs wouldn’t dream of popping them in the pan. And yet, I found four restaurants in Paternoster with Argyrosomus hololepidotus on the menu.
This was down to the efforts of Ingo Beckert, who is farming dusky kob in the harbour buildings of this quaint West Coast village. For the past three years Beckert has been refining and perfecting the array of tanks, pumps, filters and lights that turn bags of feed into plate-sized kabeljou.
“The demand for fish is increasing, while the supply from the seas is diminishing,” says Beckert. “We have the capacity for about 80 tons of kob per year, but at this stage we’re producing one to two tons per month. We only produce whole fresh fish; we are also able to supply plate-sized fish to chefs. You can’t do that out of wild stocks because it would be undersized.”
And because the farming is done entirely on land, Beckert’s fish are green-listed by SASSI, so chefs such as Richard Carstens, Margot Janse and Christian Campbell are more than happy to serve them. Carstens describes his Tokara menu as offering “complexity in simplicity”, and the same could be said for Beckert’s farm. The plain warehouses and orderly rows of tanks filled with kob make farming fish seem fairly straightforward, but the truth is a little more complex.
Tanks containing breeding pairs are where it all begins, with light and temperature carefully controlled to mimic the onset of spring and put the fish in the mood for love. Well, spawning at least. I half expect Barry White to be crooning in the background.
The fertilised eggs morph into larvae and spend three weeks feasting on microscopic shrimp before the fry are moved into larger tanks and weaned onto fish feed pellets.
“There is still the stigma that aquaculture uses fish to grow fish, but that’s simply not the case any more,” says Beckert.
Although these kabeljou — a robust species chosen for its ability to adapt to varying conditions — grow faster than in the wild, where food has to be hunted and the water isn’t always a balmy 22°C, it still takes 16 months until there’s a platesized fish ready for harvest.
“It’s a long investment, which is why we can never compete on cost with wild-caught fish. We have to produce a fish that’s not commercially available and can be sold at a premium.” That premium sees whole fish selling for around R100/kg.
The project isn’t only about keeping Capetonians well fed.
“The West Coast is known for its fishing industry, but the unemployment here is high because of deteriorating fish stocks. That creates an opportunity for people who know fish, to work with fish,” says Beckert. “But you must remember; an aquaculture facility is like a fishing vessel. You’ll have six or eight people on the boat catching fish, but it’s the people on shore processing the fish. That’s where the job creation comes in.”
Alongside providing sustainable seafood, job creation could be a sought-after spin-off from a booming aquaculture industry, but South Africa is trailing its continental competitors when it comes to farming fish, says Beckert.
“With abalone and trout farming South Africa is the leader, but in terms of volume of fish, South Africa is tiny; we make up only 5% of Africa’s aquaculture production. Even with high-value abalone, the value of our aquaculture industry is minute.”
SA’s arid climate means there is limited scope for freshwater aquaculture; but Beckert believes there is enormous room to grow marine fish farming. “We have a very long coastline and a good diversity of marine fish that can be farmed. Marine aquaculture has huge potential for South Africa. Stumpnose, yellowtail, grunter . . . all these can and will be cultivated in fish farms in the next 10 years.”
WE HAVE A VERY LONG COASTLINE AND A GOOD DIVERSITY OF MARINE FISH