November 2001 Buyer’s Guide-hybrid striped bass update

November 2001 Buyer’s Guide

Hybrid striped bass

Striper prices will likely remain the same through 2002

Salmon, catfish, trout and tilapia may get all the headlines when it comes to fish farming in America, but hybrid-striped-bass producers just go slowly and steadily about their business.

The U.S. production of hybrid stripers, a cross between white bass and striped bass, should come in at about 10 million pounds again in 2001.

“Even though every year we get new farms coming on line, others go out of business,” says one veteran striped-bass farmer. Although more than 50 farms in the United States grow striped bass, just three farms in California, Texas and Mississippi produce half the national production.

A Florida firm, which had ambitious plans to produce more than a million pounds of hybrid stripers in recirculating tanks, threw in the towel this fall.

“It’s tough to make money growing striped bass,” says a manager with the nation’s largest producer, which operates a tank and raceway farm in the desert near California’s Salton Sea. “You have to be very good at what you do.”

One of the reasons hybrid stripers remain a niche market is because of the relatively high production cost. It costs about $2 to $2.25 a pound to grow stripers, more than twice as much as salmon, and more than three times as much as catfish or tilapia. After factoring in transportation and packaging, producers have to sell at delivered prices of almost $3 a pound for fresh, whole fish to get a decent return on investment.

And at a time when production costs should be going down as farmers gain more experience with stripers, they’re actually going up. Rising energy costs added 15 cents a pound earlier this year to the production costs of some growers, for example.

The California striped bass farm, the largest and most successful in the country, plans to produce about 3.5 million pounds of stripers this year, about the same as last year.

“We’ve looked at adding capacity, and we’ve found new sites,” says the farm’s marketing manager, “but it would take a very large investment, and I’m not sure the market is ready to absorb millions of pounds of new production at the price we need to get.”

The delivered price of fresh, whole, tank-raised stripers has held steady to West Coast wholesalers at between $2.85 and $3 a pound this year, depending on quantity, while live fish have been selling for between $4 and $5 a pound.

The price of fresh, whole pond-raised stripers from farms in the South has averaged about $2.50 to $2.75 a pound, although periodic gluts have driven prices lower, especially when failed farms unload inventory on the market.

Look for similar pricing for hybrid stripers in 2002. You’ll see better availability of larger fish, too. The California farm has adapted a new growing technology, which holds fingerlings at a lower temperature to slow growth, which results in a more consistent production of larger fish throughout the year.