Photo by Jennifer Smith
Kevin Hutchinson inspects a tilapia from his pond at Swimming Rock Fish Farm.
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Swimming Rock Fish Farm raises native species and supports the environment.
About 22 miles southwest of Charleston in the small town of Meggett, Swimming Rock Fish Farm sits on the banks of the Toogoodoo Creek. Down the long, gravel drive is a large, cement-walled, mud-bottomed pond where men in waders slowly pull a seine net from one end to the other, gathering a net full of three- to four-inch tilapia.
Here, down this dusty country drive, thrives the sustainable seafood movement – the place where the theory of eating local becomes practice.
Founded by Rick Eager after he retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Swimming Rock has been stocking local ponds (with tilapia, red drum, and Palmetto bass) and supplying bait (mud minnows, shrimp and fiddler crabs) throughout the region for 20 years. More recently, Rick began selling live Palmetto bass (a hybrid of striped and white bass) to local high-end restaurants.
A year ago, Rick decided it was time to retire – again – and approached longtime colleague Kevin Hutchinson, an innovative businessman with a degree in aquaculture science, to explore the possibility of forming a partnership. Kevin’s and Rick’s relationship developed nearly a decade ago when Rick taught Kevin how tilapia can control algae growth through their voracious eating habits, and in return Kevin showed Rick how ultrasound can kill the algae the tilapia do not eat. Through a combination of tilapia and ultrasound, they have been able to eliminate the use of chemicals.
Photo by Jennifer Smith
Harvests, such as this one, can happen frequently for tilapia, since they mature quickly.
Swimming Rock Fish Division of South Santee Aquaculture came into being in mid-2007; tilapia is part of its future.
At Swimming Rock, “finishing” means allowing the fish to grow to a size desirable to chefs (larger than those used for pond management) and keeping them in salt water for at least two weeks to flush out any muddy flavor from the meat. Eventually, the smaller tilapia will be sold for $2.60 each, to be used in stocking ponds for weed and algae control. The larger tilapia will be moved to tanks in a partially enclosed building, where they will grow to a larger size and be sold to restaurants for around $4 per pound.
Before passing the reins to Kevin, Rick established a relationship with the South Carolina Aquarium’s Sustainable Seafood Initiative, an educational program designed to teach chefs how to make environmentally sound seafood choices. Because Swimming Rock employs sustainable aquaculture techniques, the Sustainable Seafood Initiative promotes Swimming Rock products to partner chefs and retailers.
Aquaculture often gets a bad rap when it comes to sustainability. Fish farms, when managed improperly, can destroy or degrade important marine habitats, pollute the surrounding ecosystem with excess waste and residual pesticides and antibiotics, require the harvest of substantial amounts of wild fish to meet the protein demands of the farmed fish and introduce non-native species. When managed properly, as Swimming Rock is, aquaculture can provide a sustainable complement to our supply of locally caught wild fish.
Together, Rick and Kevin have fine-tuned this aquaculture system to minimally impact the environment and are even helping, as in the case of the flocks of endangered wood storks that often stop by the open ponds for a quick bite to eat. But it’s not just the wood storks that drop in for the occasional meal. It’s also the herons, egrets, cormorants and ducks.
Bird predation is a problem for many aquaculture operations, and some use lethal methods to protect their product. Kevin does not, but he’s tried just about every other scare tactic in the books.
“Nothing works,” he explains. “We just give about 15 percent back to the environment to feed the birds.”
Rick and Kevin protect the environment in other ways, too. The water used at Swimming Rock is a combination of rainwater, brackish water from the adjacent Toogoodoo and water from a deep-ground well where heat from the earth keeps the water at a relatively warm 72 degrees year-round.
Before any water is released back into the Toogoodoo, it flows through two settlings ponds inhabited by water-filtering clams and oysters and equipped with one of Hutchinson’s algae-killing ultrasonic devices. Both Hutchinson and the Department of Health and Environmental Control periodically test this water for cleanliness.
In addition, the ponds are set well away from the salt marsh bordering the Toogoodoo Creek, preserving that valuable ecosystem. The combination of ultrasound and algae-eating fish in the ponds has eliminated the need for chemicals that could leach into the surrounding ecosystem. Some of the ponds are drained each winter and allowed to dry free to naturally eliminate resident pests. Plant matter dominates the commercial fish food Swimming Rock uses, minimizing the use of wild fish protein in the fishes’ diet.
And finally, the majority of species raised by Swimming Rock are native to the area. Tilapia is one of the exceptions. Fortunately, Kevin explains that any tilapia that might escape into the surrounding area (for instance during a flood) will not live long or be capable of reproduction due to the salinity and winter temperatures of the Toogoodoo Creek.
Currently, Swimming Rock fish is available only to a select group of restaurants including the Boathouse at Breach Inlet, Fish, Voysey’s at Cassique and The Beach Club (the latter two are located at the Kiawah Island Club). One of the farm managers at South Santee Aquaculture, affectionately called “Pop,” makes weekly deliveries of live fish to area restaurants.
At the farm, Pop loads live fish into large tanks on the back of a truck and departs on his sales run. The chefs meet Pop on the streets outside their restaurants. Pop adds some of the saltwater from the tanks on the truck, then with a dip net, transfers the wildly flopping subjects to the chefs’ ice-filled coolers. The cold temperatures gently “chill kill” the fish, resulting in high-quality, extremely fresh seafood ready for the evening dinner rush. These fish are as fresh as it gets.
And as local as down the road.
TILAPIA TIDBITS
Tilapia, a general name for nearly 100 species in the cichlid family, has catapulted to the heights of seafood popularity in recent years. Nearly all tilapia raised in aquaculture are from the Oreochromis genera: Nile tilapia, blue tilapia and Mozambique tilapia, or a hybrid mix of two. Tilapia are easily adapted to aquaculture because of their omnivorous diet and unique reproductive strategy:
1. Tilapia require less feed than most other aquaculture species due to consumption of naturally occurring algae.
2. Tilapia can live in both fresh and brackish water, though reproduction is hindered or halted in higher salinities.
3. Tilapia grow quickly and can reproduce at a very young age. Tilapia at Swimming Rock take only 45 days to reach the size at which they can begin to spawn, a mere three and one-quarter inches long. Females continue spawning every 45 days.
Read more about Sustainable Seafood:
Wild American Shrimp
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