Articles:___________________________
Fish
+ basil = an expanding business
Dietitians
and nutritionists have been touting the wonders of eating fish for the past
several decades. As a result, greater and greater efforts by the world's fishing
fleets have led to serious depletion of the stocks of a number of popular food
fish.
One
possible solution to the demand for more edible fish is aquaculture, that is,
growing fish either in outdoor ponds or in indoor tanks. The use of outdoor
ponds probably seems self-evident, but raising fish indoors on a commercial
scale may not.
Myles
Harston is the owner of a business called "AquaRanch Industries" in
the small town of Flanagan, Illinois. For 20 years, he has been developing the
technology to grow fish in indoor tanks, where he can have finer control
of the parameters that influence fish growth than he can in an outdoor pond. He
has found that the costs of growing highly desirable tilapia (Oreochromis
niloticus), including building construction, energy costs, water costs,
processing costs, and so on, do not always allow him to be competitive with most
of the tilapia that appear in North American groceries, much of which is
imported.
So
Mr. Harston has developed his operation into "aquaponics," that is, a
combination of aquaculture and hydroponics (the growing of plants in water, with
an inert medium that provides mechanical support to the plants). In his system,
overflow water from his tilapia tanks, which contains high concentrations of
potentially toxic nitrogen species excreted by the fish, is transferred to
shallow tanks in an adjacent greenhouse (glasshouse) where it serves as the
growth medium for leafy plants such as basil and lettuce. The plants extract
nutrients from the water, particularly nitrogen species, and quickly reach
harvestable size. And the water, which has now been cleansed of the high
concentrations of harmful nitrogen species, is recirculated back into the fish
tanks as makeup water.
According
to data supplied by AquaRanch, a serving size of tilapia (100 g, or 3.5 oz) has
93 calories, 9 of which are from fat. Each serving also contains 90 mg of
omega-3 fatty acids, which humans need but cannot synthesize on their own. The
U.S. Department of Agriculture reports an even higher level of omega-3 fatty
acids in tilapia: 164 mg/100 g fillet before cooking, and 265 mg/100 g fillet
after cooking.
AquaRanch
anticipates entering the lucrative Chicago market in the next few months, as
soon as a few remaining details regarding processing of the fish for retail sale
are resolved. Meanwhile, the basil is already earning a profit for AquaRanch.
Sources:
·
http://www.tilapia.com/Recipies.html
·
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/index.html