Halibut hatchery season
The normal spawning season for halibut in the North Atlantic is in late spring, but because our stock is held in indoor tanks we need to synchronize their breeding season by controlling temperature and photoperiod. We have over 140 brood stock fish and many of these are now in spawning condition. For the next two months we will climb into the tanks with the fish and collect ripe gametes for incubation. Our first two batches are now incubating in the egg room, hopefully to be followed by many more. After two weeks the eggs hatch and then they are transferred to yolk-sac incubation tanks, to live off of their large yolk-sac reserves for another 45 days or so. It is only then that the delicate larvae are ready to start feeding in our hatchery tanks on live prey such as artemia. If all goes well, sometime in late summer we will have up to 30,000 juvenile halibut weaned onto formulated diets and ready to sell to our Canadian customer.
