Land-based aquaculture is still coming into its own, but it stands to upend an industry plagued by environmental concerns.
These coho salmon are being raised on land in tanks at LocalCoho in Auburn, N.Y. Credit... Amrita Stuetzle for The New York Times Aluminum Flex Pipe
Melissa Clark, a columnist for the Food section, has reported extensively on the environmental impact of seafood. She reported from Auburn, N.Y.
A revolution in the way Americans eat salmon is quietly being fomented inside a former factory building on the industrial edges of Auburn, a small city in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
At LocalCoho, one of the country’s few sustainable salmon farms, 50,000 silvery coho salmon glide through concrete tanks filled with freshwater that recirculates through biofilters every half-hour. To mimic a marine environment, the lights are kept a dim, deep aqua blue that makes the salmon seem to glow.
In this eerie twilight, Andre Bravo, the chief operating officer, has carefully tended these fish since they first arrived, as a mound of glistening orange roe large enough to top a thousand blini if they hadn’t been destined for piscine adulthood. It takes them 18 months to reach full size — about 6½ pounds — at which point they can be sold to high-end restaurants and retailers like FreshDirect, where fillets sell for about $17 a pound.
That LocalCoho is able to raise these complex creatures on land is a radical change, one poised to turn an industry rife with environmental concerns on its head.
Salmon is the second-most-popular seafood in the United States, where the average American consumes more than three pounds a year. (Shrimp is No. 1, with average annual consumption reaching nearly six pounds in 2021.)
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