In the deserts of Dubai, salmon farming thrives

DUBAI -- From a control room in the middle of Dubai's desert, Norway's sunrises and sunsets and the cool currents of the Atlantic are recreated for the benefit of thousands of salmon raised in tanks despite searing conditions outside.

Dubai is no stranger to ambitious projects, with a no-limits approach that has seen a palm-shaped island built off its coast, and a full-scale ski slope created inside a shopping mall.

But the farming of salmon in the desert is "something that no one could have imagined", said Bader bin Mubarak, chief executive of Fish Farm. "This is exactly what we're doing in Dubai."

Inside the facility, waters flow and temperatures fluctuate to create the most desirable conditions for the salmon living in four vast tanks.

"We provide for them a sunrise, sunset, tide, a strong current or a simple river current -- and we have deep waters and shallow waters," Mubarak told AFP.

Even for a country known for its extravagant ventures, building Fish Farm, located along the southern border of the emirate, was a challenging endeavor.

Salmon usually live in cold waters such as those in and off Iceland, Norway, Scotland and Alaska -- which is why the farming of Atlantic salmon in a country where temperatures can reach up to 45C (113 degrees F) is a stretch to say the least.

"Creating the (right) environment for the salmon was the hardest thing we faced," Mubarak told AFP.

"But we came up with the idea of dark water that resembles deep water, a strong current like the ocean with the same salinity and temperature of the Atlantic."

'GREATEST PRODUCTION'

Fish Farm bought some 40,000 fingerlings -- or juvenile fish -- from a hatchery in Scotland and thousands more eggs from Iceland to raise in open tanks in Dubai's southern district of Jebel Ali.

Salmon are born in freshwater but live in salt water for much of their lives before returning to freshwater to spawn.

At their home in the United Arab Emirates, the tanks are filled with sea water that is cleaned and filtered.

Fish Farm produces 10,000 to 15,000 kilos of salmon every month.

It was established in 2013 with the support of Dubai's Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, to farm salmon and other fish including Japanese amberjack, which is used to prepare sushi.

Mubarak said that because of the technical challenge, salmon-raising remains the "greatest production" of the farm, which supplies to Dubai and the rest of the United Arab Emirates, where the population includes millions of expatriates.

"The UAE imports around 92 percent of its fish from abroad, and the goal today is to be able to fulfill (that demand) for imports internally, so that we have food security," Mubarak said.

"In case there is an interruption, cyclone or floods, the UAE will be able to supply itself. This is the main objective."

PROS AND CONS

Another goal is to be environmentally friendly and, in a move also motivated by the high cost of electricity, Fish Farm has plans to go solar-powered.

The ecological pros and cons of farming fish on land, compared to raising them in rivers and seas, are hotly debated, as is the alternative of harvesting wild fish.

"There are animal welfare concerns about keeping fish whose natural behavior is to swim freely in seas and rivers in closed tanks," said Jessica Sinclair Taylor, from Feedback Global, a London-based environmental group.

"There are also concerns about the energy requirements and therefore carbon emissions."

But she said that on the plus side, land-based farming prevents water pollution in lakes or seas where salmon farms are sometimes sited, and where waste and run-off can damage marine ecosystems.

According to the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the UAE imported 2.3 billion dirhams ($630 million, 570 million euros) of fish products, crustaceans and mollusks in 2017 and exported 280 million dirhams' worth.

Fish Farm, the UAE's only fish farm, hopes to meet at least 50 percent of the country's needs within two years, said Mubarak.

In April, Fish Farm began selling its products in supermarkets. Despite its decidedly unnatural origins, the salmon is marked "100 percent organic" because of the fish feed and the absence of antibiotics in a closed environment.

"It is (more expensive), but I also think about the quality -- I've tried different salmon before and this is less greasy and my family prefers this one," said Katja, a German residing in Dubai.

She said that UAE is "making really great efforts to produce not only fish but vegetables and other foods locally, and I think I should really support that".

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Tuna sells for record $3M in auction at Tokyo's new fish market

TOKYO - The owner of a Japanese sushi restaurant chain on Saturday set a record by paying more than $3 million for a bluefin tuna in the year's first auction at Tokyo's new fish market, exceeding his own record price of 2013.

Kiyoshi Kimura, who owns the Sushizanmai chain, paid 333.6 million yen ($3.1 million) for the 278-kg fish caught off the coast of northern Japan's Aomori prefecture, or double what he had paid 6 years ago.

"The tuna looks so tasty and very fresh, but I think I did too much," Kimura told reporters outside the market later.

"I expected it would be between 30 million and 50 million yen, or 60 million yen at the highest, but it ended up 5 times more."

Saturday's event was the first New Year auction of the Toyosu market, after the famed Tsukiji fish market shut last year to provide temporary parking for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

Kimura had held the record for top price paid for a single fish at the new year's auction for 6 straight years until 2017. But last year, the owner of a different fish restaurant chain paid the highest price.

After the auction, the fish was taken to one of Sushizanmai's branches located in the old market of Tsukiji.

Tuna is prized around the world for its use in sushi, but experts warn growing demand has made it an endangered species.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Made in Lesotho' sushi, anyone?

KATSE DAM, Lesotho - The idea of Japanese consumers eating sushi exported from a tiny African country with no coastline may sound improbable, but the kingdom of Lesotho is pulling it off.

Hatched in the boardroom of South African bullion producer Gold Fields, a project called Highlands Trout is now exporting 2,000 tonnes of rainbow trout a year, mainly to Japanese supermarket chain CGC.

It is even by-passing Tsukiji, Tokyo's massive wholesale fish market - usually the first destination for fish imported to Japan - to sell the trout directly to the retail market in a country where consumer standards for sushi are the highest.

"We managed to bypass Tsukiji because of the quality of the trout and the relationship we built and the approach we took and so we went straight into retail," said project manager Stuart Slabbert.

"Made in Africa sushi" is a new twist in the African/Asian trade story, offering hope that a poor, land-locked country can tap its natural resources to produce and export a high-value product to discerning consumers.

It also highlights the limits of global trade as the jobs created in rural Lesotho, while welcome, cannot compensate for the loss of jobs for migrant labour in South Africa's mines, long the mainstay of Lesotho's economy.

A mountainous country, completely encircled by South Africa, Lesotho supplies water to its much bigger neighbour.

Peering down at the blue waters of the Katse Dam from Lesotho's green mountains, one thinks of the fjords of Chile or Norway, top fish farming nations famed for their pink salmon.

The Japanese market is always on the lookout for sushi alternatives as global wild tuna populations decline.

In this regard, the Japanese appetite for Lesotho trout is not unlike China's hunger for African resources, including farmland to help feed a population growing in size and wealth.

Slabbert says Highlands Trout, which has been exporting to Japan since late 2012, now hopes to expand its annual output of 2,000 tonnes as Lesotho's trout-handling capacity - between Katse, another dam and one in the works - is expected to reach 10,000 tonnes a year.

By way of contrast, South Africa, with its massive coastline along two oceans, has an aquaculture industry that produces around 4,000 to 4,500 tonnes per year.

TROUT OR TUNA?

A Gold Fields' task team hit upon the idea of farming trout in Lesotho in around 2007 as part of a South African government scheme to support development in countries that supply migrant labour to South Africa.

In the 1970s, around 70 percent of Lesotho households had men working as migrants in South Africa, the vast majority of them underground.

But South Africa's gold industry, which has produced a third of the bullion ever mined, is in a state of steep decline as costs soar and shafts plunge deeper to extract the ore, while other sectors such as platinum are in deep trouble because of low prices and labour unrest.

Over the past two decades the industry has shed tens of thousands of jobs, many from Lesotho.

So the 100 jobs created by Highlands Trout, now owned by two South Africa-based companies - Advance Africa Management Services and Pure Ocean Aquaculture - since Gold Fields sold its interest some time ago, are certainly a boon for the area.

But the kingdom's economy, mostly based on subsistence farming and the export of water to South Africa, needs to generate many more - perhaps by tapping its natural advantages such as its raw beauty to encourage more tourism.

Off a winding paved road built two decades ago to haul cement to build the wall of the Katse Dam, the outlying villages that lie along dirt tracks are poor but not gut-wrenchingly destitute, with subsistence farming of maize and the raising of cattle and sheep the visible lifebloods of the local economy.

At Highlands Trout, the fish are raised in floating cages and fed on special pellets imported from France.

Grown to an optimal size of 2.5 to 2.8 kgs, the fish are essentially "fresh frozen" as within an hour of being scooped from the water and cleaned, they are put in a blast freezer - the start of a roughly month-long journey to Japan.

There is no futures market for trout but the global price of the product fluctuates with that of fishmeal, Slabbert said.

"The average is about $5 a kilogramme. We get the upside of that, we are getting the highest price globally from our Japanese client," he said.

In another improbable twist to the tale, this "pink gold" - rainbow trout - is native to the Pacific Rim of North America and Russia, far closer to Japan than the highlands of Lesotho.

The species' adaptability makes it the ideal farmed trout, and it has been introduced to at least 45 countries and every continent except Antarctica.

But Lesotho is one of few places with the clean and cold water conditions needed to produce a quality that makes the cut in Japan.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

'Lucky' ways to eat on Chinese New Year

MANILA – For most Filipinos, leaving the last piece of food on a serving plate is an act of courtesy. For the Chinese, however, it is a way to attract money and good luck.

Paul Kwok, president of Modern Shanghai restaurant, said they intentionally leave a piece of fish on the plate during Chinese New Year to boost the chances of having more savings in the coming months.

“It means you’ll have savings for the year,” explained Kwok, who recently flew in from Hong Kong to meet members of the media and bloggers at Modern Shanghai. “You shouldn’t finish the fish.”

Dimsum baskets and appetizer trays are also a hit during the Chinese New Year, Kwok noted, saying that these are comparable to treasure boxes.

Modern Shanghai has its own version of the “lucky” offering, serving a plate with the soupy xiao long bao dumplings, sio mai, hakaw and pork buns.

They also have an appetizer platter with Chinese staples such as jellyfish and drunken chicken.

“When it’s Chinese New Year, you’ll see that Chinese houses have a treasure box with all these things. You eat them and you pass the box around,” he said.

Another way to attract good fortune on Chinese New Year is serving pork knuckles, which symbolize longevity and positive energy.

A Filipino version of the traditional Chinese dish is the pata tim, which is usually cooked in a blend of soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and cornstarch.

For vegetables, one cannot go wrong with the use of iceberg lettuce, Kwok said. This can be served as is, or can be used to wrap different meat fillings.

While he personally believes in feng shui principles and applies them on Chinese New Year and on his own home, Kwok does not incorporate superstition into his businesses, saying that his main priority is his customers.

“If it’s for my home, I’ll get a feng shui consultant, but not for business. I believe what’s more important is to create a good environment for the customers, creating a comfortable space for them,” he said.

“Because in the end, lucky or not, good food is about using the right ingredients. It’s about the quality of the product,” he added.

Most Filipinos already know that fish is considered “lucky” in Chinese culture, as well as uncut noodles and sticky rice.

Click here for more “lucky” dishes for Chinese New Year.

Click here for more “lucky” practices during the Chinese New Year.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

'Testicle-munching' Amazon fish found off Denmark

COPENHAGEN - A Danish fisherman made an unusual find in his nets recently when he discovered a pacu, a sharp-toothed cousin of the South American piranha with a reported penchant for testicles.

"If they bite, they can bite hard ... especially when they bite you where you really don't want to be bitten," joked fish expert Peter Resk Moeller of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

However he said that the pacu is not a meat-eater and normally does not attack people.

The rare find has spread across international media, who have jumped on the fish's reputation as a "ball-cutter" for its reported attacks on men.

In a documentary for US channel Animal Planet in 2012, an expert on extreme fishing relayed anecdotally that some fishermen in Papua New Guinea had had their testicles bitten by pacus.

However Moeller defended the toothy vegetarian's eating habits.

"The fisherman was very surprised and a bit suspicious because this fish, the pacu, looks so much like a piranha but it is not a carnivore," said

It is not known where the fish came from, but Moeller suggested "it probably came from a local aquarium."

"It's interesting to see that it survived in the Oeresund (Strait that separates Sweden and Denmark). Even if the water is not very salty we didn't know it could survive the salt," he said.

Moeller said it was hard to predict whether the pacu would now become common in Danish waters.

"Every time we have a fish of a new species you think you won't find another one, but you never know."

The fish is however farmed in North America as food.

"I've heard it's very good, I would like to try it," Moeller said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com