COMMENTARY
Big Island abalone industry thrives in farm's frigid water
By Michael Buchal and John C. Couch
Diversification has long been a key goal for Hawai'i's economy.Ê For the past several years in the Big Island's Kona district, a 14-member team, including half-a-dozen biotech and aquacultural professionals, has been hard at work, creating Hawai'i's newest significant export industry — abalone, the "caviar" of the mollusk family.
Advertiser library photo • March 2003
This new industry — which has just been named the Governor's Exporter of the Year (after receiving the Governor's New Exporter of the Year Award in 2002) — takes advantage of one of Hawai'i's least-heralded resources: the bracing, 45-degree waters of the Pacific.
Abalone like these are a delicacy, and the Big Island's reliable supply of cold, deep-ocean water makes farming them a natural for Hawai'i .
That's right. Just a few hundred yards beneath the ocean playground that attracts millions of visitors each year, the water turns frigid — an ideal medium for numerous life forms.
Just a stone's throw from Kona International Airport at Keahole, the ocean bottom plunges precipitously, and with it, the temperature.ÊThree thousand feet down, two big pipes suck up more than 13,000 gallons of this bone-chilling resource every minute and pump it a short distance to the Hawai'i Ocean Science & Technology (HOST) Park, the home of Hawai'i's burgeoning high-tech aquaculture industry and what is already the biggest abalone "farm" in the United States, the Big Island Abalone Corporation (BIAC).
A cousin of snails, oysters and 'opihi (limpets), the single-shelled abalone is a highly prized ingredient in epicurean dishes around the world, but especially in Asia — a veritable gastropod for gastronomes.
On its initial 10-acre site at HOST, Big Island Abalone mixes three essential ingredients to raise these invertebrates, "spineless heroes" of economic diversification in Hawai'i: (1) cold, clean, nutrient-rich seawater; (2) abundant sunshine — 350 days' worth per year, more than any other coastal location in the United States; and (3) biotechnical know-how.
The mixture of cold seawater and reliable sunshine is what's needed to grow prodigious quantities of abalone food — algae. That same cold water — predator-free, unlike the sea itself — also provides the perfect temperature for these hardy creatures. And biotech savvy is what has enabled BIAC's scientists and aquacultural technicians to develop, patent (together with researchers at Oregon State University) and produce a proprietary strain of algae that abalone thrive on.
BIAC's Kona Coast Abalone are of a uniform, ideal size, taste and quality, the result of being grown under carefully monitored conditions. In short, another premium Hawai'i product is bringing new dollars into the state's economy.
Moreover, overfishing of this resource in the wild has put a premium on abalone. Three decades ago, the world supply of abalone stood at 30,000 tons a year. Today, despite growing interest in abalone "farming" in several countries, world production has dropped to just 15,000 tons.
On its initial 10-acre facility at HOST, BIAC is already outproducing California's 15 abalone aquacultural operations and is well on its way toward its initial goal of 100 tons of premium abalone a year, a target that should be attained in 2004.
The next step will be to expand the facility, 10 acres at a time, to 60 acres. This is expected to be completed by 2012. The resulting economies of scale will then enable BIAC to produce 1,000 tons of abalone a year — some 7 percent of the entire world supply. This will also require the staff to grow to more than a hundred people.
To put this development into perspective, in 2002, aquaculture in Hawai'i was a $25 million industry (wholesale value), to which BIAC's abalone contributed about $1 million. By the time BIAC reaches its 100-ton target next year, it will be contributing $4 million to the total. At 1,000 tons about a decade down the road, it could be contributing an annual $40 million or more to Hawai'i's exports, more than doubling the value of the state's aquacultural output.
By comparison, the farm value of Hawai'i's annual production of all fruits (except pineapple) is $30 million; macadamia nuts, $29 million; and coffee, $23 million.
Around the world, aquaculture is a $50 billion industry — and growing at an explosive 10 percent a year.
With the exception of small amounts of abalone supplied to Hawai'i restaurants and sold to Japanese visitors, BIAC's entire production is air-freighted live to Japan, direct from Kona, under an agreement with JAL.
For the foreseeable future, the main concern of Hawai'i's high-tech abalone "farmers" will be to increase production of these "spineless heroes" as fast as possible, to keep up with the appetite of a worldwide retail market that exceeds $1 billion a year. That presents a big opportunity, and the confluence of cold water, abundant sunshine and BIAC's biotech know-how gives Kona some real advantages. We are hard at work, making Hawai'i the abalone capital of the world — and that's no baloney!
Michael Buchal is president of Big Island Abalone Corp. John C. Couch, a director of the company, is former chairman, president and CEO of Alexander & Baldwin Inc.
