12 Jun Chef Mark’s Quick Bites: Abalone Farming on Hawaii’s Big Island
One of the most interesting things I discovered in Hawaii, while on the “So Much More Hawaii” tour sponsored by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, was the Big Island Abalone Farm, an operation on the Kona coast which farms prized abalone using sustainable aquaculture supported by deep sea water from the NELHA project (Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority), a state supported “pipeline” which brings pure cold water from from than 2,000 feet below the surface.
I spent the afternoon at the farm accompanied by Al Salomon, Facility Manager, who gave us a tour around their unique facility. In this video, Al explains the system and gives us insight in the sustainability of the process, which has added benefits in the form of an employee vegetable garden.
I also got to go behind the scenes into the state-of-the-art sorting area where the adult abalone which are large enough for harvesting are sorted by size and weight. This system uses non-toxic CO2 to lull the abalone to sleep long enough to transport them through the sorting process and back into the cold water tanks so that they don’t react negatively and toughen up. The abalone are kept alive throughout this process and even in transport.
I interviewed Hiroshi Arai, CEO of Big Island Abalone, about the project, the process and the tremendous market demand for abalone in Japan and other parts of Asia. I’ll have that audio interview on an upcoming episode of the ReMARKable Palate Podcast, as well as a more in depth “Main Course” video. For now, these are just “Quick Bites”.