Turkey’s seabream and seabass farmer, Kilic Deniz Urunleri has recently acquired two bluefin farms for €2.6 million with the capacity of 500 metric tons per year, and over the past two years has been investing in, and researching techniques to raise bluefin tuna juveniles. Kilic’s juvenile survival rates have been significant with the company producing 10,000 fingerlings since joining the EU-funded Atlantic bluefin tuna project, Transdott in 2014. The company uses yolksac larvae from the seabream at its own hatchery as a feed source in its bluefin operation. Japan, the only country in the world which currently produces Bluefin tuna at commercial volumes also uses yolksac larvae as feed, however, its production fell by 50% in 2012 after its fingerling survival rate fell from 3% to 1%. Kilic’s production is still in its early stages, and the company declines to release total bluefin investment figures for the coming years, however, the company aims to reach production capacity by the end of 2015. Since it takes 1.5 to 2 years for a bluefin to reach commercial size, the company will then focus on exporting to Japan to supply the sushi and sashimi markets. To read more about this, and other advances in bluefin tuna production:
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