Personally, we think that sushi is pretty fantastic stuff, and apparently so a lot of people since its popularity worldwide has grown exponentially in the last decade. In fact, did you know that it's become so popular that tuna, one of the staples of Japanese cuisine, is in danger of being over-fished?
There's a fishery out in Hawaii that aims to do something about this. Kona Blue is working to provide a sustainable source of sushi-grade yellowtail tuna. It's farm-raised but uses new techniques to avoid the environmental pitfalls of other attempts at tuna farming.
Much of tuna 'farming' in the world's oceans is actually a process of transferring immature wild tuna to pens in order to fatten them to the proper size and weight for consumption. In contrast, Kona Blue controls the entire life-cycle of the tuna, hatching spawn at a land-based facility and then transferring them to larger pens as they grow.
These ocean pens are 3,000-cubic-meters in volume and are situated in deep ocean water off the Kona Coast on the Big Island. The company website explains that strong currents flow through these pens, which do double duty keeping this area of the ocean clean and also better simulating the tuna's natural environment.
Kona Blue feeds their tuna a mix of "approximately 30% fish meal and fish oil from Peruvian anchovies (a sustainably managed fishery for the past 30 years) and trimmings from fish processed for human consumption, and 70% sustainable agricultural proteins and oils." No hormones hormones or antibiotics are used, and frequent lab tests indicate no detectable mercury in the fish.
Kona Blue continually stresses a commitment to sustainable farming for both the tuna and the ocean environment and keep their environmental monitoring logs and operation permits open to the public. If successful, Kona Blue and companies that follow similar models could ease the pressure off of deep-sea fishing and help refresh the population of wild tuna.
What do you think?
Here's a round-up of some other good seafood info:
Text Message for Safe Fish
Ocean Friendly Seafood Guide
Another Reason Not to Eat Tuna?
(Image Credit: Kona Blue)
sounds great -- how can i find out who sells their fish?
view SweetTea's profile
www.kona-blue.com
view wwoolsey's profile
But interestingly, if this is the company that sells "kampachi", Whole Foods has decided to discontinue selling it because they felt the feed the company uses for the fish wasn't high enough quality. It was apparently recalled during the Chinese pet food scare.
view laura in la's profile
Hi - I work in marketing for Kona Blue and just came across this post. Thanks for the interest in what we're doing... I wanted to clarify a couple of things. We are raising Kona Kampachi, which is a Hawaiian yellowtail (in the amberjack family), not a tuna. And Whole Foods discontinued carrying our fish when we changed the feed formulation to reduce the amount of fishmeal and fish oil, which was recommended to us by environmental groups. We included poultry meal in the reformulated food in order to meet the nutritional requirements of our fish. Whole Foods has a policy to not carry aquacultured fish that has been fed poultry meal, due to the fact that many of their vegetarian customers do not want land-based animals in the nutrient chain. (This decision had nothing to do with the Chinese melamine scare.) Our feed is very high quality, carefully monitored, and is highly sustainable. In fact, our Kona Kampachi has recently been ranked as a "Good Alternative" by the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program. This is the first time that a net pen marine aquacultured fish has been ranked anything other than "Red: Avoid." Again, thank you all for your interest! Aloha.
view konablue's profile