in for a good week for aus tuna industry, page-2

More questions than thoughts newfish...

You say that this development will be big for Australian aquabusiness. How so?

My scant knowledge is that SBT is one just type of tuna and currently a lot of the Australian catch of SBT goes to Japan for uncooked uses. I also know that SBT is showing every sign of having been fished out, with a reasonable chance of SBT stocks collapsing in the next few years.

So my impression is that it will be good for the local industry because it is a high value fish to sell and it will be good for the animal because it may have a chance to survive in the wild.

But are there are types of fish / tuna that are more readily available that the Japanese could use for sashimi instead of SBT?

Are any of these fish able to be farmed (where their life cycle has already been closed)?

Is there a risk that the closing off of the life cycle of SBT will result in it losing its rarity value and just becoming a commodity fish in competition to say the basa (?)that is being farmed in Vietnam?

Also will farmed SBT be a downmarket product like farmed prawns? For instance Australia currently produce about 5000t pa and the Japanese pay top dollar for that fish - if we produced 20000t pa maybe the increased supply crashes the price (a bit like if louis vuitton was sold in every 7 11 store in Japan the price would fall to nothing).

Sorry for so many questions - if you know of a useful source of info about aguaculture that would be great also. TIA newfish.