No substitute for quality
Clockwise from opposite page: Douglas Smart working on one of the cages; packing the seabass; feeding the seabass
as smooth as possible, but the fact was that no-one was working on the issue of a consistent supply of fi sh, which made my job much more diffi cult than it needed to be.’
Bernardez and Smart soon
realised that the only way they could achieve a consistent supply of farmed fi sh was by doing it for themselves. ‘Fish farming compa- nies are geared towards profi t and
loss, but for me it’s more impor- tant to adapt to the needs of my customers fi rst, deliver exactly what they want, when they want it, and then, hopefully, the profi ts will follow,’ he continues. So to this end, in May 2012, Ber-
nardez set up Naturally Atlantico to farm seabass in the Canary Islands.
“
I did a lot of market research before I decided what fish I was going to farm
www.fishfarmer-magazine.com ‘I did a lot of market research be-
fore deciding what fi sh I was going to farm’, recalls Bernardez. ‘I chose seabass because it can be supplied pre-packed with no processing, unlike salmon or cod. ‘I also chose to farm organic seabass because there is a need for an organic alternative to salmon and I can charge 30-40% more
for organic seabass than salmon. I chose the Canary Islands because it is the second most important bass and bream producer in Spain, and with over 14 million visitors to the islands annually, the fi sh is recognised as being of excellent quality.’
Another reason Bernardez chose the Canaries is that the temperature profi le there is ideal for seabass. ‘A one kilogramme fi sh can be grown there in under two years’, he says. But what makes Bernardez’s farm different to others there is that they farm in the Atlantic, rather than the Mediterranean, ‘which is one of the most polluted seas in the world. The water in the Atlantic is much
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