COURTENAY, B.C. – Barry Sjostrom was tired of catching fish, so he
decided to settle down on shore and farm them instead.
The former commercial fisherman settled on tilapia after learning they
were among the hottest selling fish on the market.
“The market is strong and growing,” he said.
British Columbia wholesale prices have jumped to $3.60 a pound from
$2.35 in 1996, when he started researching the market.
He started producing and selling fish last year, and sells to a mainly
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Asian community in the Vancouver area, where he trucks and ferries
fish each week from his Redfish Ranch in Vancouver Island’s Comox
Valley.
Sjostrom said a Fraser Valley farm would be closer to those markets,
but he likes his water better. It comes from a good well, fed by a
river running through his property.
“We’re building a reputation and they do like our fish,” he said.
Fish grouped by age and size fill a variety of tanks from aquarium to
swimming pool sized scattered throughout a metal-sided warehouse.
A 1,000 gallon tank holds as many as 9,000 baby fish. On average,
56,000 fish are in the tanks at any one time.
Fish are kept at 28 C and fed a trout ration supplied by a feed
company.
Tilapia originated in the Nile River and have been farm raised for
decades.
Referred to as St. Peter’s fish, Sjostrom said they are believed to be
the fish Christ is said to have multiplied a thousandfold to feed the
masses.
A member of the Cichlid family, tilapia are comparable to snapper and
perch and can live in either fresh or salt water.
Colours range from black to pink and grey, often changing with the
colour of the tank they are in, he said.
Consumption in the United States, where there are numerous tilapia fish
farms, reached about 145 million pounds in 2000 and has been growing at
more than 35 percent a year for the past eight years.
Annual B.C. sales have grown to about 1.5 million lb. in the last year
from 700,000 lb. in 1996.
Sjostrom recently received a call from a major grocery chain looking
for 1,000 lb. a day, considerably more than the 100,000 lb. of fish he
harvests annually.
His initial sales of 300 fish last year have grown to 1,200 to 1,500
one- to two-pound fish every two weeks.
Fish are harvested live three days before they are loaded into a truck.
Sjostrom had to jump through numerous hoops over the last six years to
get his business on stream.
“This place is virtually a vault,” he said of the fully enclosed
structure.
The expansive metal shed sits on 50 acres, along with a home for
Sjostrom, his wife and children.
He said the province has strict regulations governing the importation
of non-native fish. That meant the 20,000 fish he bought from the
southern U.S. were quarantined and tested for disease.
He was also required to provide assurances the fish could not escape
and threaten native salmon stocks.
The tilapia undergo regular testing to ensure they are not able to
adapt to B.C.’s cold waters.
Sjostrom finds tilapia disease-resistant when kept free of stress,
which he accomplishes by avoiding tank overcrowding and maintaining
oxygen levels to prevent diseases such as strep.
“If you combine the two, you’re looking for trouble,” he said.
It was a steep learning curve for Sjostrom, the only tilapia fish
farmer in B.C. He hired a fish expert to show him the ropes, including
how to maintain tanks, temperatures and water quality and high tech
monitoring, filtration and effluent management systems.
Sjostrom replaces 10 percent of his water daily, compared with trout
farms that recycle all the water. He said the effluent is disinfected
before it is released to a field.
Tilapia require less oxygen than salmon and trout, and can be stocked
in tanks at higher rates. Recirculation systems also function more
effectively in the warmer waters that tilapia require.
Sjostrom has travelled to an Ontario tilapia farm to learn more about
“egg taking” to increase survival rates and prevent fish from
swallowing the fertilized eggs they store in their mouths until they
hatch.
There are big costs in growing the small fish. Sjostrom’s fish farm
cost $1.5 million.
Oxygen costs alone run around $275 a day, he said. His fish would die
within 30 minutes if the pumps turned off. That makes it tough to get
away from the farm.
Funding his business is a major preoccupation for Sjostrom, who has
received more than $300,000 in federal and provincial government grants.
That includes a $75,000 forgivable loan from Aboriginal Business
Canada. Sjostrom’s grandmother was Chippewa-Cree.
Other grants have helped pay for the extensive testing required to get
established and the installation of solar heaters.
Human Resources Development Canada gave him a $75,000 job fund grant,
on the condition he hire five to seven people.
He employs two workers, which will increase with next year’s
expansion plans.
It’s a lot of work for a fish farm business that he thought would be
easy.
Sjostrom shakes his head remembering the bureaucracy and regulations he
faced and the nervous bankers who sought immediate returns on
investments.
“If I knew then what I had to go through, I would never have started,”
he said. “My biggest stress should be keeping the fish alive, not
worrying about banks.”
Sjostrom said there are only a few tilapia producers in Canada, but he
believes the fish hold much promise for Vancouver Island and his own
business plan.
“Around here, it could be a new way of ranching,” he said.
Al Castledine, director of seafood development with B.C.’s agriculture,
food and fisheries ministry, doubted there was much room for many more
tilapia fish farmers, saying that would lead to over supply and falling
prices.
Retail prices in Ontario of $5 to $7 a lb. tend to get depressed
quickly when there’s too many suppliers, he said.
“It’s a relatively limited market to primarily ethnic, Chinese
populations,” he said of white flesh, mild-flavoured fish comparable to
walleye, perch and pickerel that are good for wok cooking.
He said there is great demand for tilapia in the U.S., but also many
producers. Castledine said Sjostrom would be wise to stick with local
markets, where he can command a premium in live and fresh fish markets.
He said a recent depression in the rock cod fishery, similar to
tilapia, could allow tilapia to make some business inroads.
Castledine, calling the approval process “quite onerous and costly,”
praised Sjostrom for his determination in establishing his fish farm.
“Barry has really stuck to it and gone through a lot of growing pains,”
he said.
