Kingston shoppers who usually choose between snapper they can’t always afford and imported sea trout now have a third option, and it was raised in a cage off the coast of St. Thomas. B&D Trawling has bought the entire first harvest from Jamaica’s marine cage farming pilot, roughly 5,000 pounds of red drum, and is selling it through its downtown Kingston retail outlet.
The fish came out of the water on October 8 at the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard base in Bowden, St. Thomas, ending a 7-month pilot run by the National Fisheries Authority with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Jamaica has farmed tilapia in land-based ponds for years. Growing fish in floating pens offshore is a different game, and this was the first batch to make it all the way to a fishmonger’s counter.
B&D won the bid for the full catch and is selling it whole, filleted and sliced while it watches what customers reach for first. CEO Roderick Francis hasn’t shared what the company paid or what it’s charging, but he put the price under snapper and roughly level with kingfish and imported sea trout. Supermarkets and hotels will have to wait, since the company is sticking to its own retail counter for now.
Early signs are good. Francis told the Jamaica Observer the trial would likely be short because “the fish is already selling quickly and the response has been very encouraging.”
The bigger plan is to buy from fishing communities that set up cages of their own, the same way B&D already buys from fishermen. The company is already testing what that could look like in Portland, working with the Alligator Head Foundation and the Drapers Fishermen’s Harbour Association on a model that farms several species at different depths in the same patch of sea, backed by a grant from the Compete Caribbean Partnership Facility.
Getting there won’t be cheap. Good fish feed is expensive and hard to come by, Francis said, naming it among the toughest hurdles. Producers would also need protection from storms, the right ocean sites, technical help and careful environmental management. He wants government support to bring feed prices down.
There’s also a timing problem. One big harvest is a novelty, not a supply chain. The pilot ran on 2 large commercial cages. Francis reckons about 12, each harvested at a different time, could keep fish coming every month.
For now, anyone curious about Jamaica’s first ocean-raised fish will find it at B&D Trawling’s downtown Kingston outlet, while the harvest lasts.
— SS
Stephen Stanberry
