The Lockdown Made Big Fish Bad News - The Wall Street Journal

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Mike Cherney

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June 14, 2020 1:01 pm ET

When a restaurant serves a fish whole, there is a reason it fits the plate perfectly. It’s because Boris Musa grew it that way.

His indoor fish farm in Australia supplies restaurants with plate-size barramundi grown to 1.8 pounds. The coronavirus put the restaurant industry on ice for months, but Mr. Musa’s fish kept growing. That led to a big fish problem—as in, his fish were getting too big.

If Mr. Musa’s barramundi, a white fish popular in Australia, grow too much, the water-filtration system that is keeping them alive won’t be able to keep up. Once they tip the scales at about 3 pounds, he said, they’re too large for a restaurant dinner plate.

To save his fish, and his future profits, Mr. Musa is turning to science. He is betting that by lowering the water temperature in his tanks, he can slow down the metabolism of his fish, reduce their appetites and stall their growth. At the height of the lockdown, he even considered a more extreme option: trucking his fish more than 1,000 miles away to a more spacious outdoor farm owned by his company.

“This is a really peculiar set of circumstances,” said Mr. Musa, chief executive of MainStream Aquaculture, which spent years breeding fish to grow faster. “Normally in our business, we’re trying to maximize the biological potential of our fish.”

‘This is a really peculiar set of circumstances,’ said MainStream Aquaculture CEO Boris Musa, shown holding a barramundi.

Photo: MainStream Aquaculture

Fish farmers all over the world are trying to slow the growth of their fish as the pandemic wreaks havoc on supply chains and consumer demand. Others are trying different strategies: freezing their fish using liquid nitrogen, smoking them so they can be stored until demand returns, and skipping the restaurants and selling their fish online. Restaurants around the world are reopening, but the lockdown created a fish-farm backlog.

Fish farming now accounts for almost half of the world’s seafood production. But unlike traditional fishermen, who can stay in port if demand falls, fish farmers who have put time and money into growing their fish can’t just shut down.

“We’ve got to look at it as if we have a 16-month crystal ball,” said John Ng, president of Hudson Valley Fisheries, an indoor fish farm about 100 miles north of New York City. That is how long it takes to grow Mr. Ng’s steelhead trout to its target size of nearly 7 pounds. Consumers can now buy Mr. Ng’s fish on his website, but sales were down some 60% due to restaurant closures.

Mr. Ng said he has decided not to try to stunt their growth with colder water because that would increase his energy costs. He worries that cutting back on feeding might hurt quality. So he is smoking some for storage and donating some unsold product to food banks.

Seven pounds is the target size for steelhead trout grown at Hudson Valley Fisheries in New York.

Photo: Bob Handelman

Unlike weekend anglers looking for bragging rights, fish farmers frequently don’t want monster fish in their tanks. They often judge a fish ready for sale when it grows to the size of a dinner plate—perfect for serving whole in restaurants.

Mr. Musa said it takes eight months to grow barramundi to the ideal 1.8 pound plate weight. By mid-May, some fish were already more than 2 pounds.

If sales stopped totally, Mr. Musa estimated, the fish could have hit 3 pounds in about three more months, despite efforts to slow their growth. At that point, they would be too big for a plate and would have to be moved to one of the company’s outdoor farms. The fish would need about another year to hit about 9 pounds, a good size for fillets.

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But with restaurants reopening and an increase in sales to fish shops, supermarkets and directly to consumers, Mr. Musa is optimistic he won’t need to move his fish.

Lowering water temperature just a few degrees slows down fish metabolism so they aren’t as hungry, though they will still grow a little, said David Francis, an associate professor of aquaculture at Deakin University in Australia.

“Those fish can be held in a stasis mode for a considerable amount of time, happily kicking along,” Mr. Francis said. “Obviously, the farms need to start selling fish at some point.”

Clean Seas Seafood Ltd., which farms kingfish off the coast of South Australia, has reduced the amount of food it is giving some fish that already have reached their target weight. But it can’t adjust its water temperature because its fish, often used for high-end sashimi, are farmed in pens in the ocean.

“Leaving them in the water is a very bad idea because they just keep eating and eating,” said Chief Executive David Head.

Clean Seas Seafood is using liquid nitrogen to freeze fish, which should give them a shelf life of at least two years.

Photo: Clean Seas Seafood Ltd.

Instead, the company is harvesting its fish mostly as usual and using liquid nitrogen to freeze them, which should give them a shelf life of at least two years. Clean Seas began using the technique before the pandemic, but has since increased its cold-storage capacity, Mr. Head said.

Blue Ridge Aquaculture in Ridgeway, Va., which farms tilapia indoors, usually grows the fish to 1¾ pounds, which it said is perfect for displaying live in the tanks of community grocery stores. Sales took a hit during the coronavirus lockdown because its distributor couldn’t get the fish into New York City, one of its biggest markets.

Blue Ridge is trying a different approach to slowing fish growth. It is giving them less protein in their feed, which means they put on less muscle.

Trout at Hudson Valley Fisheries.

Photo: Bob Handelman

Write to Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com

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