One California-based company is set to build what will become the United States’ largest ocean-set fish farm off the coast of San Diego.
Rose Canyon Fisheries, a business entity formed by the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute and private equity firm Cuna del Mar, will build a farm that CEO Donald Kent tells local ABC affiliate 10News will produce a whopping 11 million pounds of fish per year.
“We’re the first ones to try this,” Kent told ABC. “We are importing over 90 percent of our seafood in this country and over half of that is farmed. And there’s no reason we shouldn’t farm it ourselves.”
The farm will reportedly raise three species of fish: California yellowtail, white seabass and striped bass.
It may be difficult to picture what the country’s largest fish farm might look like, but for reference, 10News reports that the farm would equal the size of the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the farm has already come under fire from at least one environmental group.
“We’ve seen their plans for environmental protection and we think they fall very, very short of what’s necessary to protect our ocean,” San Diego Coastkeeper‘s Megan Baehrens told 10News.
Kent disagrees.
“It will have a non-measurable impact on the environment,” he told the outlet.
The CEO couldn’t offer a timeline for when the project might be completed, because no one has yet attempted to build a farm of this size.
Whenever the farm gets built, let’s hope it ends up situated far enough from the massive, billion-dollar desalination plant going up in nearby Carlsbad. San Diego residents probably wouldn’t appreciate sea bass bits in their drinking water.