‘Fishless fish’: the next big trend in the seafood industry

‘Alternative seafood’ is having a moment, with the rise of companies like BlueNalu and Wildtype, which has the backing of Leonardo DiCaprio

In the middle of San Francisco, there’s a pilot production plant for Wildtype, one of a handful of cell-cultivated seafood companies in the US. Inside, it’s growing sushi-grade coho salmon in tanks similar to those found in breweries – no fishing or farming required.

Cultivation starts by taking a small sample from a living fish species. Cells then multiply as they would in nature in the large vessels and eventually become fatty and lean parts of a fish fillet.

Depending on whom you talk to, fishless fish could be the next big thing in seafood production. While plant-based seafood products in the US account for only 0.1% of seafood sales – less than the 1.4% of the US meat market is occupied by plant-based meat alternatives – venture capitalists are getting serious about cell-based seafood. San Diego-based BlueNalu has raised $84.6m (£74.8m) since its founding in 2018, and Wildtype has received $100m (£88.4m) in series B funding with investments from Leonardo DiCaprio, Bezos Expeditions and Robert Downey Jr’s FootPrint Coalition, among others.

Entrepreneurs and advocates say cruelty-free cell-cultivated seafood is a solution to the seafood industry’s many environmental problems, including overfishing, health risks from mercury and microplastics, and lack of traceability. The current unsustainable seafood supply chain typically has up to 10 to 15 intermediaries between fishers or farmers and the person who ultimately purchases it.

Wildtype’s co-founder and CEO, Justin Kolbeck, a former diplomat who has worked on food insecurity abroad, worries about how current practices would feed a growing population’s demand for seafood.

“The scope of what we’re facing is so massive that if we don’t all succeed, we as a species will collectively fail,” he said. “We can’t fix this when we’re at that point – we need to fix it now when there’s still time for oceans to recover.”

In many cases, seafood products travel multiple times around the world before reaching the end consumer.

“We’re one environmental disaster away from extraordinary disruption to the supply chain and the global consumption of seafood is at an all-time high,” said Lou Cooperhouse, founder and CEO of BlueNalu, which is initially focused on growing bluefin tuna toro. In the next decade, he envisions factories being built around the world that can meet consumption demands and says they are ready to scale quickly.

Sustainable sources of seafood are needed to meet the demand from a growing global population that is on pace to reach 10 billion by 2050. While plant-based alternatives that look and taste like fish are gaining traction, cruelty-free cultivated seafood products could be on dinner plates in the next year or two, pending regulatory approval from the US food and drug administration.

But critics say in order for cell-cultivated seafood to be a better bet for the planet than fishing or farming, the industry would have to make their expensive products cost-competitive and get consumers to willingly substitute it for wild-caught fish.

It also needs to be eaten in numbers high enough to replace wild-caught fish. Researchers say this is unlikely, given the fact that aquaculture, the farming of aquatic organisms, hasn’t succeeded in replacing global wild-caught fisheries but is simply adding to seafood production.

“I’m really skeptical of claims that cell-based seafood companies will make a difference for fisheries and ocean conservation,” said Benjamin Halpern, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has researched cultivated seafood’s ability to reduce fishing pressure.

The state of California recently made the largest single investment in alternative protein research of any US state. The $5m (£4.4m) in funding is being split between three University of California schools: UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UCLA. And the Biden administration is backing lab-grown meat as referenced in a recent executive order.

When grown indoors, cell-cultured seafood like salmon and tuna can be optimized for taste, texture and nutritional content, and cooked like traditional fish or eaten like sushi. But it remains unknown if consumers will embrace lab-grown fish.

“We talk a lot about price, taste and convenience as the three core aspects the alt-protein industry needs to focus on,” said Marika Azoff, a corporate engagement specialist at the Good Food Institute, a non-profit advocacy group that promotes alternative proteins. “They need to taste the same or better, they need to be priced the same or cheaper, and they need to be widely available.”

Even cell-cultivated skeptics agree that hi-tech seafood has a huge market potential, but they say it’s going to always be an expensive product even though costs are coming down with time. They also note that species such as salmon and tuna aren’t particularly threatened worldwide.

“This is feeding the affluent another food product,” said UCSB’s Halpern. “Even at the cheapest level – and it will never be that cheap – it’s not going to be the food product most people eat around the world.”

BlueNalu recently announced that it cracked the code to significant profitability in its first large-scale facility, thanks in part to technologies that reduce operating and capital costs. When combined with the company’s high-end product and market focus, the company says they will enable a projected 75% gross margin.

“I see a role for alternative seafood production in the sustainable seafood equation, just as I do for sustainably harvested wild fisheries and sustainable aquaculture,” said Rob Jones, global head of aquaculture at the Nature Conservancy. “Both cell-based and plant-based seafood can be a part of that future.”

Jones said alternative seafood products could achieve a similar 1% to 2% of the overall market, similar to plant-based meats, but that the full environmental and social effects of the production methods, such as carbon emissions and ingredient sourcing policies, must be considered.

Most alt-seafood companies won’t share their intellectual property and it’s unknown just how energy-intensive cell culturing is at this stage. BlueNalu’s Cooperhouse likens it to beer or beverage production and says it’s important to remember that the current seafood industry is incredibly resource-intensive.

“Your resources are labor on ships, oil, massive transportation and the many animal lives lost for a very inefficient 50% to 70% yield depending on species,” he said. “Let’s address the global supply chain issues and solve them one species at a time.”

BlueNalu and Wildtype say there’s no single solution to meeting the world’s demand for seafood, but believe their presence can lead to greater sustainability in the industry.

“Fish farms recognize that their current practices need to change and commercial fishing operations know something needs to change,” said Wildtype’s co-founder Aryé Elfenbein, who is also a cardiologist. “Our role is to assist with that transition – that’s really what we’re there for.”

cover photo: Wildtype’s salmon nigiri topped with finger lime. Photograph: Courtesy of Wildtype