Fish Farm A Sign Of Ohio's Growing Aquaculture

Reported by: A.P.
Photographed by: 9News
First posted: 12/27/2006 9:54:38 PM ]

CLEVELAND (AP) -- The brick fortress towers over the west bank of the Cuyahoga
River, a hulking reminder of the corridor's gritty industrial heritage.

Appliances once filled the bustling Scranton Road warehouse.

Conveyer belts and elevators whirred.

Today, little moves inside the old building. Quiet fills most of the space.

Quiet and Mike Harubin's farm.

Sound fishy? Well, it is.

Harubin is raising 15,000 yellow perch and goldfish in a walled-off section of
the warehouse a few paces past a loading-dock door.

Nine giant plastic tanks hold the schools, with scores of scaly students
destined for either local ponds or the deep fryer.

Agriculture officials said he has a one-of-a-kind operation in Ohio, the only
known example of someone recycling a city building to cast a line into the
state's growing aquaculture industry.

"It seems like a crazy idea," said Harubin, 31, "but so did selling bottled
water at one time."

He truly may be catching a wave.

In Ohio, the number of aquaculture farms increased by 67 percent between 1998
and 2005, according to a census report by the National Agriculture Statistics
Service.

The state's 55 farms reported nearly $3.2 million in sales last year.

State officials suspect those numbers are low and that the census missed many
small operations.

Aquaculture specialist Laura Tiu from Ohio State University estimated that the
state is home to about 200 fish farms.

At least a dozen farmers adapted old barns to jump into the business, Tiu said.

Only one city slicker tried a similar conversion.

Harubin, a self-employed auto mechanic from Parma, launched Clearwater Fish Farm
four years ago as an experimental side business.

He got hooked on the idea after reading of another startup Ohio fish operation.

Harubin considered the industry up-and-coming given the diminishing wild fish
population.

So he rented the warehouse space and purchased a 500-gallon tank, which he then
filled with 500 young yellow perch.

Harubin brought little practical experience to the project.

It showed, too:

He checked in one day and found that first group of fish doing the dead man's
float.

"Killed every one of 'em," Harubin said.

He dived right back in, learning from his mistakes.

The next batches of perch thrived, growing from screw-sized guppies to the brink
of a good fisherman's tale.

With each success, Harubin added more tanks and fins to his waters.

He turned into a fishmonger, too, selling to folks stocking ponds and cooks
filling frying pans to all parts east and west of the Cuyahoga.

He expects to sell 500-plus pounds of fillets this spring.

Harubin sees his downtown location as key: "People eat fish," Harubin said, "and
I'm near a whole lot of people."

That is one of the primary benefits of an urban fish farm, said Martin
Schreibman, a professor at Brooklyn College's Aquatic Research and Environmental
Assessment Center in New York.

Schreibman is an advocate of turning brownfield buildings into fish factories.

But the movement has been slow to gain momentum, Schreibman said.

The cost of city rents and utilities can make it an upstream fight.

He said government assistance may be needed to lure more entrepreneurs.

"There's a lot of sensibility to doing this," Schreibman said. "It just hasn't
caught on yet."

Harubin is patient, though.

He said the fish make enough money to pay for themselves.

He intends to pour profits from the coming years sales back into the operation.

He looks to rent part of another unused Flats-area building to install
additional tanks.

How big can the business get? Like any other farmer, Harubin dreams.

Sometimes, he mulls the possibilities while standing on the loading dock of his
metropolitan barn.

In the distance, Cleveland juts into the sky above a crooked river.

"It's such a great view," Harubin said.

Gotta love those farm scenes.




http://wcpo.com/news/2006/local/12/27/oh_aquafarms.html