Is grouper the next big farmed species?

“Not very many people are doing grouper,” Tropic Seafood’s Jon Chaiton told IntraFish when we spoke to him for our farmed species report -- Beyong The Big Three.

Indeed, since Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute’s John Tucker made progress on grouper aquaculture three decades ago, “really, nobody’s put the effort into grouper. It’s been fished commercially for so long and so well,” said Chaiton, whose company is a Bahamian subsidiary of US-based Beaver Street Fisheries.

Although the species is farmed well in Asia, in other parts of the world “nothing else has come in terms of grouper aquaculture,” according to University of Miami’s Director of Aquaculture Dan Benetti.