I don't know the answers to your questions @BellGuide3124 - but...

I don't know the answers to your questions @BellGuide3124 - but here's my two cents on the matter.

The unit economics in aquaculture varies substantially species by species. If you consider the largest aquaculture companies in the world, most if not all are focused on atlantic salmon. It's not accidental - more R&D has been invested in salmon over the past decades than any other species. Other fishing related companies include wild caught fish (tuna in particular), or maybe input providers to aquaculture. But there aren't many other large companies in other species.

Prawns are one of a few other species that exhibit (1) good unit economics now, and (2) potential for R&D to continue to improve their efficiency. Carp and tilapia are also excellent species when it comes to unit economics, though this is mostly in Asia. It essentially boils down to the food conversation rates and the type of food inputs they require. There have been a few posts on this previously, so I won't go into it again here.

Do you know what has terrible unit economics? Cod. They are largely carnivorous - they are not omnivorous like other aquaculture species that have good unit economics. The cost of feed input is very high. So if you try and compare something like Murray Cod Australia to Tassal, you'll find that the EBITDA/KG margins are chalk and cheese. In fact, you'll probably find that to be the case with most other aquaculture companies on the ASX. The only way for MCA to push up that margin is to get premium pricing for their product. But you know what? Cod is not a taste people want by and large. Actually, from what I gather, it's a tasteless kind of white fleshy meat and nothing to write home about - so the people who like it are the ones that don't like their fish tasting like fish. Well, hard to probably grow that premium product into a large market to get scale. I may be wrong, but that's my guess.

Meanwhile, the unit economics of something like Pacific Oysters is very good. Extremely low feed inputs required, they actually clean up the marine environments they live in, and can even be integrated into the salmon production process. They have 18months to grow out, unlike Sydney Rock Oysters which can be 3-4 years and so you end up having much higher inventory / biomass requirements. You may have noticed that Angel Seafood $AS1.AX got a takeover bid today, and shot up ~45%. I wrote about Angel Seafood recently, and it is the only other position I have in aquaculture.

On FinTwit I did a deep dive into ASX Aquaculture for those interested. Bit dated now, but this shows the Market Cap vs EBITDA - MCA and SFG comes off worst in my opinion, Tassals the best.