300,000 salmon fingerlings.
Huon Aquaculture started proposing to develop an Australian-first salmon nursery at its Whale Point industrial site in Port Huon in 2017. Yesterday, 300,000 salmon fingerlings moved into their new home.
In a facebook post, the Tasmanian company said that the fish were transfered from their nearby Forest Home hatchery where they will grow to around 500g before putting them to sea.
“This will reduce the time they spend at sea from around 14 months, to less than 12, allowing us to better manage our existing leases at sea, enabling longer fallow periods between stocking, all of which benefits sustainability and biosecurity.
“The nursery uses world-leading water recirculation technology that purifies up to 98 per cent of the freshwater in which the fish are grown. This enables 98% to be reused and repeatedly treated over and over again with 2% going to waste treatment,” the post said.
The site has will have an estimated production of 800 tonnes per year with a maximum onsite standing biomass of 504 tonnes of stock within a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS). It sources freshwater from a retention pond which collects rainwater from the rooftops of the facility.
The Danish company Billund Aquaculture provided the tech for the site.
In a press release from 2017 Peter Bender, CEO and managing director of Huon Aquaculture said: “We have been watching the development of land-based technologies for some time and we are preparing to take our first step toward it with a new salmon nursery. The benefit of a salmon nursery is that we get to research the fish as they grow and see how they perform in land-based growing facilities. It also means that the time the fish are at sea is reduced with will further improve the company’s environmental performance through longer fallowing and improved biosecurity.”
