Guess what percentage of the world’s aquaculture the U.S. is currently producing. 40%, 30%, 15%, 8%, 1%? If you guessed 1% - you are right. By now most people have heard the figures for the major imbalances in our U.S. fish consumption. Talk about a trade deficit. Ninety plus percent of the seafood we eat in the United States is imported and well over half of that is aquaculture, the majority of which is imported from Asia. China is 30 years ahead of us in the aquaculture business. It’s way past time for the U.S. to use its skills for innovation to get in the game.
The powers that be are finally starting to pay attention to these sobering facts. We cannot continue to over fish the world’s oceans. We must develop our domestic aquaculture business. The major species currently being grown in Florida is hard shell clams, (Mercenaria mercenaria). The majority of the farming for this species occurs around Cedar Key. Hard shell clams, and bivalves in general, are an excellent area for development in Florida generally and our area in particular. After all, we live in the only area in the country that has three national estuaries on its borders, Tampa Bay, Sarasota Bay and Charlotte Harbor. We are currently growing a healthy amount of hard shell clams locally. You will find them on the menu in all three of our restaurants. Now here’s the exciting part. We have one of the foremost bivalve experts in the country in our area. Curt Hemmel cultures the vast majority of the hard shell clam seed for the Florida market and also much of the clam seed used up and down the eastern seaboard. Curt has pioneered the commercial propagation of our native Sunray Venus clam. We are really excited to be partnering with Curt in this regard. Sunray clams are fabulous table fare. Sweet, almost like conch, with a high meat to shell ratio, 3 to 1 and they have a beautiful light weight shell. Not only are they great to eat but the sunrays can be frozen. If you freeze hard shell clams they have a high default rate in which they fail to open when cooked. The high open rate for the Sunrays gives us an opportunity to ship them around the country for our domestic market as well as ship them overseas to begin to address the huge imbalances in our seafood balance of trade.
We are serving sunrays in all three restaurants. We invite you all to come in and try this exciting new, native seafood product.
Sunray Clams…Aquaculture Superhero!
Guess what percentage of the world’s aquaculture the U.S. is currently producing. 40%, 30%, 15%, 8%, 1%? If you guessed 1% - you are right. By now most people have heard the figures for the major imbalances in our U.S. fish consumption. Talk about a trade deficit. Ninety plus percent of the seafood we eat in the United States is imported and well over half of that is aquaculture, the majority of which is imported from Asia. China is 30 years ahead of us in the aquaculture business. It’s way past time for the U.S. to use its skills for innovation to get in the game.
The powers that be are finally starting to pay attention to these sobering facts. We cannot continue to over fish the world’s oceans. We must develop our domestic aquaculture business. The major species currently being grown in Florida is hard shell clams, (Mercenaria mercenaria). The majority of the farming for this species occurs around Cedar Key. Hard shell clams, and bivalves in general, are an excellent area for development in Florida generally and our area in particular. After all, we live in the only area in the country that has three national estuaries on its borders, Tampa Bay, Sarasota Bay and Charlotte Harbor. We are currently growing a healthy amount of hard shell clams locally. You will find them on the menu in all three of our restaurants. Now here’s the exciting part. We have one of the foremost bivalve experts in the country in our area. Curt Hemmel cultures the vast majority of the hard shell clam seed for the Florida market and also much of the clam seed used up and down the eastern seaboard. Curt has pioneered the commercial propagation of our native Sunray Venus clam. We are really excited to be partnering with Curt in this regard. Sunray clams are fabulous table fare. Sweet, almost like conch, with a high meat to shell ratio, 3 to 1 and they have a beautiful light weight shell. Not only are they great to eat but the sunrays can be frozen. If you freeze hard shell clams they have a high default rate in which they fail to open when cooked. The high open rate for the Sunrays gives us an opportunity to ship them around the country for our domestic market as well as ship them overseas to begin to address the huge imbalances in our seafood balance of trade.
We are serving sunrays in all three restaurants. We invite you all to come in and try this exciting new, native seafood product.
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