Umami Sustainable Seafood successfully spawns and hatches

Umami Sustainable Seafood Inc. announced that for the second consecutive year, its Kali Tuna subsidiary, based in Kali Croatia, has successfully spawned and hatched Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna in captivity, reports www.megafishnet.com with reference to Umami Sustainable Seafood.

The Company estimates that at least over 500 million eggs were released into the Adriatic. As part of the process of continuing research and development into the "closed cycle" farming of Bluefin Tuna, the Company's marine biologists at Kali are now preparing for next year's spawning season when the Company is expected to have over 10,000 potential spawning fish in three different locations.

In announcing this development, Oli Steindorsson, the Company's Chairman and CEO said: "I am tremendously excited by the progress of our closed lifecycle project. In Umami, we have continuously adopted a sustainable operating platform for our Bluefin farming activities. We are only too conscious of the enormous demand for premium "Toro" sushi and the importance of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the Bluefin Tuna stock. As such, we have consistently adhered strictly to fishing quotas imposed in all areas where we operate and have actively lobbied to reduce quotas to levels where we believe stocks can replenish.

We are fortunate to have developed over many years an operating platform comprising state of the art farming techniques, which enable us to significantly lengthen the farming cycle to greatly increase the weight of harvested fish. This has both assisted our sustainability activities and increased our profitability relative to competitors."

Mr. Steindorsson continued: "The fishing industry has historically believed that it was impossible to breed Bluefin in captivity in a commercially viable manner. The key issue has been the commercial viability of growing the tuna over a long period of time, we know that once you have a small fish, you also need to grow it to become a full sized tuna - this is where our expertise has been built up over the recent years."

Our research and understanding of the fish has come with the additional benefit of allowing us to understand what is required for natural spawning to occur, and now we can proudly say that we have the biggest brood-stock globally of Bluefin Tuna"