Fish farming finds its way to landlocked Midwest

OMAHA, NEB.>> The latest of five generations who have worked the same ground in northeastern Nebraska, 52-year- old Scott Garwood, isn’t growing corn or cattle — it’s fish.

Specifically, thousands of an Australian freshwater species called barramundi — often dubbed Asian sea bass because of its similar sweet, white flakyflesh— in large tanks inside a warehouse.

With global consumption of seafood outpacing wild fish populations, many have turned from roving the world’s waters to aquaculture, using coastal net pens or ponds to raise freshwater and saltwater species. But the emerging trend of indoor aquaculture is bringing the surf to America’s turf.

Farmers are increasingly embracing the practice as a way to stay in agriculture and participate in what’s billed as “green” food production, with virtually no chance of their fish spreading disease or genetic mutation into the wild. And such tank systems can be placed almost anywhere — from Minnesota to Florida — because temperature and water quality can be controlled.

Moreover, there’s a market for these land-grown fish. TheU.S. importsmore than 90 percent of the 4.5 billion pounds of seafood it consumes a year.

Globally, aquaculture supplies more than 50 percent of all seafood produced for human consumption, but only a fraction comes from the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries. Even less is known about how much the U.S. produces in indoor tanks.

“I’m afraid to tell you, the U.S. is way behind the rest of the world in terms of developing aquaculture or keeping up with production of aquaculture,” says Dr. Yonathan Zohar, chairman of the Department of Marine Biotechnology at the University of Maryland. “If you look at the U.S. production numbers, it’s mostly catfish — which is a good industry, but we need to be looking at some of the marine species we’ve been running out of.”

Some critics have suggested that the tanks — sometimes called closed containment systems — could be susceptible to catastrophic losses in the event of a power and backup generator outage. But Zohar, whose life work is in aquaculture, says the advantages outweigh “what-if” scenarios. Landbased tank fish farming nearly eliminates fish manure runoff and water waste through use of water recirculating and treatment systems, he noted.

“This t echnolog y lets us ... raise fish in a very clean environment, very optimized for their health,” said Steven Summerfelt, who is the director of The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute in West Virginia. “It’s free from disease. We haven’t used antibiotics, pesticides, anything, to treat the water or the fish for over a decade, because we keep the diseases out.”

Summerfelt had assumed those factors would drive the demand for tank-raised fish, but found, “What consumers really love is that it’s locally grown.”