Oct. 11 - WorldCatch News Network - Visitors to Kent SeaTech Corp.'s San Diego warehouses might be tempted to bring along a frying pan and tartar sauce. Navigating the dark waters in 500-gallon tanks covering the floors of the company's cramped facilities are dozens of plump, 2-pound striped bass, bred in captivity and destined for dinner plates worldwide.

"They're the kind served up in white-tablecloth restaurants and prized by ethnic-Asian grocery shoppers for their mild taste and flaky texture," said James Carlberg, Kent SeaTech's co-founder and president.

Carlberg oversees a burgeoning fish empire employing 80 workers at an unlikely farm near Mecca, Calif., in the Coachella Valley. (The San Diego headquarters handles administrative and research duties.)

The annual catch: up to 4 million pounds of the silver-scaled beauties valued at $10 million.

It all makes Kent SeaTech the nation's largest producer of farm-raised striped bass - hooking 40 percent of the market - and a niche player in the $1 billion U.S. aquaculture industry. The industry's worldwide production is now at $40 billion.

With dwindling offshore supplies of fish, and government restrictions on some commercial fishing, aquaculture firms have enjoyed a threefold increase in business in the last 10 years.

CULTIVATING A DELICACY The firm also markets its product through 40 distributors in the United States, Canada, Asia and Europe.

"Striped bass is an extremely popular fish with the Asian community," said David Ptak, vice president of Chesapeake Fish Co., a distributor of fish to restaurants and grocery stores.

About 30 percent of Chesapeake's inventory is made up of farm-raised fish, up from 3 percent in 1990.

But Ptak added that striped bass is relatively pricey, which has made it difficult to market to stores and restaurants compared to trout, catfish and other less-expensive underwater favorites.

Kent SeaTech raises its hybrid stock on 760 acres of arid desert, relying on naturally warm geothermal wells to heat its fish tanks.

"There is abundant warm water which keeps a constant temperature of about 80 degrees," Carlberg said.

The fish are taken to the farm as fingerlings from Arkansas and Florida. Kent SeaTech uses about 4 million fingerlings a year.

Separated into 96 17,000-gallon oxygenated tanks, the fingerlings are put on three growth tracks to ensure that Kent has adequate supplies throughout the year.

The growth of the fish is controlled by water temperature, diet and the density of fish in the tanks, so that some grow to maturity - between 1.25 pounds and 2.5 pounds - more quickly than others.

"We control the size in a captive state year-round for basic uniform size and consistent price," said Carlberg, adding that Kent SeaTech now sells its bass to distributors for just under $3 a pound.

About 6,000 pounds of bass are harvested daily and delivered to distribution points in Los Angeles and San Francisco by the company's trucks.

FISH CRYOGENICS The beginnings of Kent SeaTech date to 1970 when Carlberg and Jack Van Olst, two marine biologists working for San Diego State University, landed a federal grant to try to raise East Coast lobsters in a controlled environment.

Utilizing the warm water produced at San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s Encina power plant, the pair induced the speedy growth of the tasty crustaceans to commercially acceptable size, about 1 pound, in two years. It takes lobsters up to seven years to grow to maturity in the natural environment.

But the experiment ultimately failed.

"It wasn't economical. ... There was cannibalism," Carlberg said.

Carlberg and Van Olst turned to raising striped bass in 1976 under another government contract.

The work was so successful - they were the first to raise juveniles in captivity to full size - that they put together $3 million in venture capital from investors three years later to form a business partnership, then known as Aquatic Systems Inc.

By the mid-1980s, the company was raising 400,000 pounds of striped bass a year.

Carlberg said Kent SeaTech is also involved in numerous university and government research projects, from vaccine development for the Food and Drug Administration to nutrition experiments at Texas A&M.

One project close to his heart - and connected to the company's future growth - is a cryogenics experiment looking at keeping bass alive at very low temperatures and without water.

"We could ship them live," Carlberg said. "Asia would pay three times to four times their value."

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Kent SeaTech pumps out striped bass to hungry market