Kona Kampachi

[mems]

Aloha, went fishing in kona today. We went with Tad Pollack who works for the Kona Kampachi company. They raise kampachi wich is pen raised amberjack in the ocean. They are great eating. I had some tonight for sashimi. It is a white meat, a lot like ono, but has 20% fat content. Very rich and tasty. I am going to smoke some of the fillets tomorrow.
We got a couple of small tuna, but no big action in kona. The ocean current was a solid 5 knots. I have never seen water move like that before. There was an actual wake behind the bouys. Laterz, Mems.

[sculpin]

Hey Don
That's pretty interesting they are farming Amberjack now.

Mark

[Adam Grace]

Don, you're torturing me with all this news of this fresh-as-fresh-can-be sushi =P~

Enjoy your fresh sushi resource in PARADISE! :P

[Tony Buzolich]

Hi Don,

I just went to the Kona Blue website where these guys are being raised. Really neat concept and you can't get any better water.

I'm sure these fish are being fed something to maintain the growth but in the wild I believe they sometimes carry the ciguatera toxin from eating certain reef fish.

This farming concept also brought to mind the sad conditon that farm raised salmon are in wherever they are being raised. The food pellets (dogfood kibbles) that are not totally eaten by the salmon settle to the sea flooor and create an unusually high percentage of parasites that are carried back to the meat of the salmon. We in turn buy this "farmed" salmon and ingest who knows what into OUR body.

Hopefully with the depths around Kona and the stronger currents this will never happen.

I assume this company is located out by the old SEA-TEC labs? They were raising all kinds of unusal things there too. Silver salmon? Abalone?

Aloha, TONY

[mems]

Hi Guys, yeah this is kahala or amberjack. They do carry cig out on the reefs, but these are in pens and are tested. The feed is super high in fat and it is like little veals swimming in pens. They test the fish all the time, and have found no cig or parasites. They just harvested 11,000 lbs the other day and sell it whole at about $4.00/lb. They harvest twice a week and send most of the fish to the mainland and to resturants. I have had it at Sam Choy's on Oahu, but this fresh stuff was even better. We can't even buy it in our local stores.
The guy I was with sent me some pictures of a couple of local GT's who hang around the cages. One of them is swallowing whole a 5 lb kampachi in his mouth. We were going to go there and toss some plugs for them yesterday but the current was too strong. Maybe next time.
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a371/mems15/52320Kampachi20Pupus1.jpg
Look in the Ulua's mouth you will see a whole kampachi!
Now that is a big GT! Mems.

[Katz]

Thats a 5lb fish in that suckers mouth! Dang! :shock:

Kraig