Word: tuna
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...There's a huge demand for high-quality species like tuna, he says, and with world population heading for 7 billion, consumption of seafood is growing. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation says demand for fish will rise dramatically in the next few decades, and that aquaculture will be crucial to supplying an extra 40 million metric tons of seafood a year by 2030. "He will crack it; it's only a case of when," Dundas-Smith says of Stehr. "Marketing will be a challenge, but how can you not sell fish when there's a worldwide shortage...
...Southern bluefin is the good stuff - it's the ultimate sashimi. Left alone, the tuna lives to 40 and can reach more than 2 m and 200 kg. But it hasn't been left alone. While it can hit speeds of 70 km/h and dive deeper than 500 m, the path of its annual migration, from Indonesia into the waters of southern Australia, is well known to fishing fleets. And since it starts spawning only after nine years and is usually caught much younger, southern bluefin hasn't reproduced enough to repopulate. In the 1960s fishers took 80,000 tons...
...Stehr remembers hard days in the 1980s, when the quotas and low prices threatened to wipe out local Port Lincoln operators. Then the tuna men had the brilliant idea of netting their quota of just over 5,000 tons, towing it slowly into the port, and holding it there in pens to be fattened on pilchards and anchovies for a few months. Profits surged as the weight of the average fish doubled to over 32 kg, and links were forged with the lucrative Japanese sashimi trade...
...Stehr's catch quota of about 300 tons makes him one of the bigger Australian operators. But if his plan works, by the end of 2009 his company will be selling farm-bred tuna without any quota restrictions. He's aiming for at least 5,000 tons a year...
...that drive down tuna prices? With demand for sashimi-grade fish in Japan at about 500,000 tons a year, Stehr insists Clean Seas won't flood the market. In fact, Japan may not be the market Stehr is aiming for, at least initially. Since tuna grow at less than 1 kg a month, stock next year would likely be only around 7 kg, too small for many of Japan's sashimi buyers. Stehr thinks the Japanese may still want the smaller fish, but sees the U.S., China and Europe as alternative markets. Growing global demand will drive up prices...