Farm Fresh Fish

Local Ocean in Hudson

by Peter Barrett and photographs by Jennifer May, August 27, 2010

The gently rolling hills of Columbia County are rightly famed for the agricultural bounty they produce. The pastured meat and poultry, vegetables, fruit, and cheese produced on area farms are world class.
And the flounder is pretty good too.

Many ocean fisheries are in serious peril as overfishing depletes stocks of popular species and pollution contaminates more and more seafood. Much of the world’s farmed fish is raised with little oversight, using methods and materials that harm wild species and the larger environment. To address this situation, a company called Local Ocean has recently begun shipping the first of their sustainably farmed ocean fish from a facility just outside of Hudson.

Local Ocean is licensed to grow six species of saltwater fish: sea bream (royal dorado), flounder, yellowtail, and three kinds of sea bass: black, white, and Mediterranean (branzino). Five of these species are in the water, and inside of a year, all six will be in full production. Sea bream and flounder are currently being sold to restaurants. Jonathan Eisenberg, vice president for corporate development, is emphatic: “This will be the next generation of salt water inland fish farming. We see ourselves as locally fresh, environmentally friendly, and sustainable.”

Local Ocean has just begun offering their sea bream at six capital region Price Choppers, where it is labeled as “locally fresh and sustainable” and sells for $9.99 per pound (a whole fish is about a pound).

Using the original patent for a closed-loop aquaculture system developed at Hebrew University in Israel, Local Ocean developed proprietary technological upgrades to the process so it can function at a commercial scale. And the scale is large: The former factory that houses phase one contains 55 large plastic tanks, each holding 2,850 gallons and teeming with fish. The system is particularly noteworthy because it produces no waste; municipal water is mixed with sea salt (from the Red Sea in Israel) and the water is continually cleaned by an innovative biofiltration system.

In an adjacent area, two large, open rectangular settling tanks, though full of dark, mucky water, are odorless. Colonies of algae and microbes digest the fish waste, and the result is filtered and returned to the tanks; the full volume of each tank is replaced two times per hour with clean water. Other than approximately 1 percent lost to evaporation, no water ever leaves the system and solid waste is consumed in the algae tanks. “We reproduce what happens in nature, which is very efficient,” Eisenberg says, explaining the complicated choreography involved in maintaining a balance between the populations of fish and the algae; it’s like two interdependent farms under one roof, and ensuring a steady output requires vigilant attention.