Breakfast and Aquaculture Talk

I had breakfast the other morning with a gentleman that has been in the shrimp aquaculture world for nearly 30 years.


Though his operations employ open pond technology and not the new technology that we utilize in our closed recirculating system, it was a pleasure to talk with someone as knowledgeable and as cognizant of the factors that have in the past and will in the future drive the economic engine for the development of a domestic aquaculture industry.


His observations underscored my own opinions completely.


Shrimp prices (for all sizes of shrimp) are going to continue to climb. There may be some minor ups and downs in the smaller sizes based on seasonality and availability but in general the demand for shrimp is increasing and the supply both from wild caught fisheries and open pond aquaculture cannot keep up.


I mean China has started to import shrimp. Go figure. And with an appetite for seafood and a growing middle class with enormous disposable income China figures to be the major consumer for decades.


Match this with the increasing desire for healthy sustainable (read "green") seafood in Europe and the USA and it does not take an economist to see where shrimp prices are heading.


Consumers in the USA and Europe are really beginning to pay attention to the "quality" of the seafood they purchase and that also bodes well for any USA produced seafood.


(And to be blunt having personally seen shrimp and fish aquaculture operations in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and many other countries, if consumers saw the operational practices at these places, they would not touch much of the seafood that is produced there and exported to the USA). 


We also talked about how important it is that the United States start producing something in this country other then entertainment and celebrities. 


While we talked mostly about shrimp production we also both agree that certain species of high quality fin fish have the potential for an enormous upside once they are in domestic production.


One of the many positive things about the production system we employ is its ability to be adapted to grow certain species of fin fish. For me this is one of the most exciting things I can look to in the future.


Once we have sufficient production capacity for large shrimp I see us quickly launching at least two production operations with two different fin fish species. 


In any event, it was a very enjoyable breakfast and very affirming to have someone else in this business share his conviction that the time is "now" for the development of a domestic aquaculture industry over the next decade.