Playing God With Cod

By Terry McCarthy

The Shetland Islands, 150 miles off the northern tip of Scotland, are about as remote as it gets from London or the Caribbean. But for Laurent Viguie, 44, a financier in the City, and Karol Rzepkowski, 41, who was running a scuba and windsurfing business on Grenada, the storm-swept Shetlands with their clean, cold water were the perfect place to set up an environmentally friendly aquaculture business to produce cod.

Throughout European history, cod has been a staple food. But cod populations have plummeted. The worldwide catch has declined from 3.1 million tons in 1970 to around 800,000 tons today. The fishery collapsed off the east coast of Canada, and fishing there was banned in 1992; the North Sea cod take is now down 75% from 15 years ago. Farming cod, says Viguie, "was a no-brainer, really--you have a fish which is endangered that is also a big part of many nation's diets."

Raising money for their company, Johnson Seafarms, was not so effortless. The $60 billion fish-farming industry has a foul reputation from problems associated with caged salmon, such as parasites and pollution from concentrated fish wastes. Investors were leery. Viguie and Rzepkowski argued that farming cod would be cleaner. Cod is white fleshed, so it doesn't require dyes that are added to farmed salmon; nor does cod attract sea lice, so chemical pesticides aren't needed. By 2005, Johnson Seafarms had raised $38 million and had begun exporting cod to U.S. restaurants and specialty markets. The company aims to ship some 20,000 tons of cod annually by 2010.

To keep their product eco-friendly, Johnson Seafarms feeds its crop pellets of commercially caught herring and mackerel. Predators like seals and otters are repelled by a second net around the cages, instead of being shot or trapped. "We want to innovate the whole aquaculture industry to show it can be environmentally sound," says Rzepkowski. And at the same time save that great English culinary invention, fish and chips.