Under eerie blue lights designed to
simulate the ocean depths, hundreds of fish swim serenely through the bubbling
waters of their circular tanks, 15 floors up in the sky.
There are 11 plastic tanks in total, holding a combined 80,000 litres of salt
water.
They are full of grouper, a white-fleshed fish, which are all destined to end
up on the plates of restaurant-goers across Hong Kong.
This is the scene at Oceanethix, one of the numerous so-called "vertical fish
farms" in the special administrative region, which have become a key fixture of
its supply chain.
If you like, this is rooftop farming on
steroids”
End Quote Lloyd Moskalik Oceanethix
For while most fish farms around the world are at sea,
or at least, land level, in Hong Kong it is more often a necessity to put them
many floors up in tall buildings.
This is because as one of the most densely populated places in the world,
there is simply very little spare space. So fish farms have to fit in where they
can.
For the small firms that dominate the industry, it is worth the effort, as
Hong Kong has an insatiable appetite for fish and seafood. It consumes more than
70kg (11 stone) per capita every year, 10 times more than in the US.
"We're way above the hustle and bustle," jokes Lloyd Moskalik, managing
director of Oceanethix, which is based in Hong Kong's New Territories. "If you
like, this is rooftop farming on steroids."
People in Hong Kong are big fish eaters
His business, which employs six people in Hong Kong, buys in the groupers as
baby fish, or fingerlings. They then take between 10 and 13 months to get up to
market weight.
If you come here on a Saturday it's an absolute theme park
- there are people running everywhere”
End
Quote Osbert Lam Owner, City Farm
Oceanethix sells about two tonnes of groupers to fish
wholesalers each week, and Mr Moskalik says he can get as much as 776 Hong Kong
dollars ($100; £60) per kilogram.
As demand for farmed fish has soared in the region, wholesale prices have
risen at a rate of between 10% and 15% per annum for the past five years.
Oceanethix also sells its water-recycling systems to other companies across
Asia setting up similar fish farms in the sky.
"We've been selected by the Korean government as part of an ambitious plan to
establish vertical farms in multi-story buildings... in Seoul," says Mr
Moskalik.
The Singapore government has also bought a country licence for Oceanethix's
water-recycling systems, and the company has its own sister facility in
Shanghai.
Farm waiting lists
But it is not just fish farms that have been taking to the skies in Hong
Kong, as a growing number of organic fruit and vegetable plots are being created
on top of skyscrapers and other spare rooftop spaces.
There is a waiting list for space at Osbert Lam's
rooftop farms
No doubt in part caused by a string of recent food safety scandals in
mainland China, from where Hong Kong sources most of its food, a growing number
of Hongkongers are wishing to grow their own produce as naturally as
possible.
Helping to meet this demand is Osbert Lam, the owner of Hong Kong City
Farms.
From just a hobby 10 years ago, he now runs three farms that convert
thousands of square feet of rooftop space into organic plots he rents at about
190 Hong Kong dollars per month.
"We've got a list of about 30 people all waiting to get boxes," he says, from
the top of a 14-storey industrial estate building in Quarry Bay, in the heart of
one of Hong Kong's business districts.
Michael Leung's honey commands a premium price
"If you come here on a Saturday it's an absolute theme park - there are
people running everywhere."
He says the urban farms reveal just how shallow Hong Kong's urban roots
are.
"Many of the people that come here are not even two or three generations away
from the land," says Mr Lam.
"In many cases, it's just one generation before they were from farming
families. A lot of people come here with a lot of knowledge."
Expensive honey
The growth of rooftop gardens has also meant more business for Hong Kong's
urban beekeepers.
Michael Leung, founder of HK Honey, is always on the look out for new places
to put his hives, and to help him locate them, he looks up for papaya trees.
Green spaces are limited in central parts of Hong
Kong
"The papaya tree grows very well in Hong Kong - most people, if they grow
anything on the roof, it's a papaya," he says. "The height of the tree allows
you from ground level to see that someone is using the rooftop.
"We're always looking for little trees that stick out. They're like a flag, a
modern agricultural flag," he says. "Through that, we then try to approach the
people growing on the roof."
Mr Leung then arranges to rent space for his hives.
He says that the honey his bees produce has a spicy tang, which reflects the
biodiversity of Hong Kong's urban flora, and particularly the Chinese basil many
people like to grow.
Such is the quality of Mr Leung's honey that he is able to sell it for a
whopping 240 Hong Kong dollars per jar.
Pressure on
land
For Hong Kong's larger commercial organic farming operations, which buy
produce from Hong Kong's dwindling slivers of agricultural land near the border
with China, the continuous pressure on agricultural land from developers could
mean that rooftop farms will one day be all that's left to the special
administration region, which even now produces 2% of the food it consumes.
Hong Kong has a proud restaurant scene
Todd Darling, of Homegrown Foods, an organic grocery delivery business in
Hong Kong, said permissive zoning regulations make it more cost effective for
owners of agricultural land to store shipping containers on the space than to
farm it.
In the meantime, however, the food scandals that creep across the border from
mainland China have, perversely, been good for his organic business.
"I would never like to say that, but it does tend to encourage people to
consider alternatives," he says.
