THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080503
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
There's a new fish in town.
U.S. Aquaculture Inc. has started raising tilapia, a small fish with mild white meat native to the Nile River, on a farm in Suffolk.
The indoor fish farm cost nearly $500,000 to build and will produce about 250,000 pounds of tilapia annually. It employs two people full time and several others part time. The company is owned by four local investors led by Brian Squyars, U.S. Aquaculture's president.
The company had a grand opening ceremony Thursday, marking its expansion from a test facility to full-scale production.
The fish are shipped alive to dealers in Washington, Philadelphia and Toronto, Squyars said. Tilapia are particularly popular in ethnic markets, but are becoming more and more accepted in mainstream restaurants and grocery stores.
Retailing for about $6 a pound, tilapia are wholesaled from $1.15 to $2.25 a pound by the farm.
The farm raises them from fingerlings weighing about a gram to their market weight of up to 1.5 pounds in about six months. The fingerlings are bought from a hatchery in Florida.
The indoor fish farm uses a closed loop system that recirculates the water and filters out the fish waste and bacteria. The fish waste is used to fertilize an on-site hydroponic garden expected to produce about 20,000 pounds of tomatoes and lettuce a year.
Fish farming has become an increasingly viable source of seafood in the world in the past decade as wild fish stock have been depleted by overfishing.
About 15 percent of the seafood consumed in the nation is farm-raised, including about 25 percent of the shrimp and nearly all the catfish, trout and hybrid striped bass, said State Sen. Frederick Quayle, citing recent statistics.
Aquaculture is an emerging industry in Virginia, said Lorenzo Lyons, dean of Virginia State University School of Agriculture, Science & Technology, the state's leading research school for closed system aquaculture.
There are more than 350 aquaculture farms in Virginia today, compared to none 10 years ago, Lyons said.
Squyars, who has been working to put the farm together for five years, wants to franchise the tilapia farm to others and build a production system similar to that of large chicken producers.
KEYWORDS: AQUACULTURE STATISTICS by CNB