A new candidate for commercial aquaculture has emerged with a Cairns hatchery creating history by successfully breeding and rearing highly prized coral trout.
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A Hong Kong-owned company is now trialling whether the reef species can be grown on a commercial scale and has sent thousands of fingerlings to fish farms in Queensland and Western Australia.
The Company One managing director Richard Knuckey said it took years of in-house research to get the process right.
"We've learned how to spawn them and do the larval rearing and produce little fingerlings," he said.
"For the first time we've been able to on-grow those to a market-sized product.
"It was important for us to be able to show other aquaculture companies that this is possible.
Among the breeding challenges is that coral trout are protogynous hermaphrodites, which means they generally begin life as females, reach sexual maturity at about two years old, and then a year or so later can change into males permanently.
How the fertilised eggs are spawned and the larvae kept alive in tanks rather than the water column of the Great Barrier Reef remains a closely guarded secret.
Lucrative market for consistency in ideal size
The domestic market for farmed coral trout has already been tested through a consignment sent to the Sydney Fish Market.
Market spokesman Alex Stollznow said the fish fetched a premium price, which usually does not occur for new products.
"Generally with new suppliers doing something different it can be a month or two before the market really learns its true value and starts paying what it's really worth," he said.
"These guys got a price equivalent to — if not slightly higher — than its wild counterparts that day."
Mr Stollznow said while the fish were nicely coloured, fresh and well handled, it was the smaller, sweeter, more commercially viable size that gave them the competitive advantage.
"They are basically the first providers of plate-sized coral trout in Australia," he said.
"Those smaller-sized fish in the wild are juveniles and with Australia's fishing protection laws being as strict as they are we do not permit the capture of juvenile coral trout.
"Coral trout are quite territorial, they live on the reef in very clean environments. So the fact that they've been able to do this successfully and get them to breed and they're all happy is a massive achievement.
"We're thrilled."
In Australia, coral trout retails for about $35 a kilogram.
However, fingerlings have also been flown out of Australia to be grown to full size in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the species is considered a seafood delicacy and can fetch more than $80 a kilogram.
"In Chinese culture, red is associated with prosperity and that's why you see the preponderance of red fish being sold in the lead up to lunar New Year," Mr Stollznow said.
"But to be honest, coral trout are always at a premium."
Enough room for both wild and farmed fish
Amid concerns over a backlash from the commercial fishing sector, both The Company One and the Sydney Fish Market were adamant the two industries could exist side-by-side in the coral trout market.
"The wild fishery will be fully allocated and so, if we're going into the future say 10 or 20 years or even more, any expansion is going to need to come from aquaculture," The Company One's Richard Knuckey said.
"The wild fishery is very well established where most of the top premium fish go overseas to that live trade and some goes onto the domestic market.
Mr Stollznow said the edge aquaculture had over wild-caught fish was more about size than sustainability.
"Australia has incredibly strict regulations and we don't do any unsustainable harvesting, so you can't say that one is more sustainable than the other," he said.
"Obviously if you're taking juveniles from the wild that's a problem, so that doesn't happen. But that's one of the major reasons you'd go to farming them.
"What you might lose in perceived value by farming a fish as opposed to harvesting it from the wild you gain back all of that — if not more — by providing a more commercially viable specimen."
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