One more land-based salmon farm gone- one more to go?
The news wasn’t particularly surprising, as Mr. Heggelund made a compassionate plea for new investments during the Aquaculture America 2014 conference in Seattle in February. Sweet Spring has for some time been held up as a “Poster Child” by the likes of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which has afforded the company’s freshwater-produced coho salmon a high ranking while at the same time down-grading salmon produced in conventional, more natural conditions in ocean net pens.
In a posting from yesterday (“Earth Day”), Alaska Salmon Ranching makes no two bones about its feelings regarding this news event;
Well, it seems that the story we broke in February has come to its logical conclusion. IntraFish reports today that Sweet Spring salmon company is in “transition”. In other words, they’re transitioning into going out of business. They’ve downsized staff, the CEO has quit, they’ve sold off equipment and stopped growing fish for market. As we detailed in February’s report, the company was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, despite having the deep pockets of philanthropic foundations and sympathetic billionaires.
In recent months they were hoping to swindle a few more dollars (actually, $6 million) to keep the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s pet project alive, but they obviously couldn’t find a sucker. Given the near criminal activity imposed on two Hutterite families in Montana, we’re happy no one else got hooked.
Oh, and in related news, another one of our land-based salmon farming features made the news today: Namgis salmon farm. Their first fish – branded as Kuterra salmon – was sent to market today. In a few years we’re quite sure we’ll be providing you with a bookend similar to all the other similar land-based salmon farming businesses (not to be confused with legitimate, sustainable business models of other land-based salmon farming companies) that were supported by large amounts of public and philanthropic money, but little aquaculture expertise or common sense.
We’ll start drafting the text soon.
