Farming sea fish on land

J-STORIES - Unlike most Japanese prefectures, Okayama doesn’t border the open ocean. So, it is not the first place you’d expect to find sea fish being farmed. But that is exactly the point. If it is possible to farm sea fish in Okayama, perhaps they could be farmed anywhere?

Okayama University of Science, together with telecommunications firm NTT East and supermarket chain Ichii, have set up a completely self-contained fish farm on land. There, they are farming sockeye salmon. This fish was chosen not only because it is sold for food, but also because it develops slowly and easily gets sick, making it a challenge. The team has already had success farming groupers in landlocked Mongolia.

Crucial to the project is using specially developed fresh water that contains a precise balance of electrolytes sea fish need to grow quickly and healthily. A demonstration experiment began in January using water with added sodium, potassium and calcium. The concentrations are much lower than in seawater, yet the fish are already developing more quickly than in the wild.

Hiroyuki Sakura, a spokesman for NTT East, told J-Stories that the team hopes to achieve commercial-scale farming by 2024. To do that, the fish will need to grow to a salable weight of 1 kg or more. If the salmon successfully develop in this self-contained system, it will be a world first.

The project’s leader, Professor Toshimasa Yamamoto, told J-Stories that he started his research after a student asked him whether it is possible for plankton to develop in fresh water. From that, he became interested in whether it might be possible to farm sea fish and shellfish in places far from the ocean.

In future, renewable energy could be used to power these farms and make Japan’s fishing industry more sustainable, he said.

Translation and Editing by Tony McNicol 

Top photo: edb3_16/ Envato

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