Kona, Hawaii-based Ocean Era, formerly known as Kampachi Farms, is changing course with its offshore aquaculture project in the Gulf of Mexico and is now proposing to farm red drum instead of kampachi at the site.
Ocean Era has been working towards gaining permits for its Velella Epsilon project -- a small-scale demonstration project for a single batch of fish -- for the past six years. The project is headed by aquaculture veteran Neil Sims.
The original plan was to farm 20,000 kampachi (Seriola rivoliana), which is around 1 percent the size of a commercial fish farm, in a fish farm located 40 miles offshore of Sarasota, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico.
