Fifteen minutes up St-Laurent from the butcher shop, in the Chabanel neighbourhood (aka the shmata district), Opercule raises Arctic char in several large round basins in a warehouse sized space in the basement of an innocuous industrial block.
Opercule's niche is urban aquaculture: the cultivation of aquatic organisms in an urban setting. Urban agriculture, in all its variations (herbs, vegetables, mushrooms, fish) is invisible, quietly working in the hidden corners of our city, out of sight. It's in industrial buildings, on top of malls, it's anonymous and mysterious. Unless you own a restaurant, you've probably only ever heard of Lufa Farms, because most urban farms haven't yet figured out how to exist as profitable and accessible businesses. Their infrastructures are extremely costly, and their distribution is still in the hands of busy overworked owners.
Modern aquaculture is fish farming, a means to sustain access to seafood in the face of depleting wild fish stocks. Today, most of the world's seafood comes from fish farming. Most of that farming takes place either in ponds (like the Asian shrimp you see in the supermarket), or in suspended cages in coastal waters (like all Atlantic salmon on the market). These types of farming are associated with a wide range of problems, like extensive habitat damage and disease transmission between farmed fish and native species, pollution from solid waste and effluent by-products, pesticide and antibiotic residues, and introductions of non-native species to marine environments.
A third type of aquaculture approach takes place in land-based recirculating systems consisting of a series of tanks located outdoors or inside a warehouse-type structure. Most of the water used in the process is recirculated back into the system via a mechanical bio-filtration process that removes the solid waste and treats the water. It is effective at managing waste and reduces any potential environmental impacts, including disease transmission, fish escapes, and predator interactions. It allows the user to control many variables including water temperature, oxygen levels, lighting, feeding and CO2 and waste removal.
Opercule owners David Dupaul-Chicoine and Nicolas Paquin have introduced cutting edge aquaculture techniques into an urban setting, producing around 25 000 char a year just a couple of kilometers from here. I predict that during this uncertain period of looming tariff wars and trade insecurity, urban aquaculture will have a golden opportunity to prove its worth. Canada exports about 80% of its fish and seafood, and at the same time, imports most of the fish and shellfish that we eat. 50% of those imports come from the US. This is what they call redundant trade in the biz, and is one of the international trade concepts I have the hardest time wrapping my head around. As if we need another reason to prioritize locally produced goods, but really, the idea of paying extra tariffs on products we already produce locally is confounding.
So back to Chabanel, and Opercule's recirculating-system tanks, which I got to visit in person last week. David and Nicolas met at l'École des Pêches et de l'Aquaculture du Québec in Gaspésie. They started a fish farm pilot project in David’s garage to ensure that it was possible to have this type of system in an urban setting, using water from the city’s water system. In 2021 Opercule received their first batch of Arctic char eggs. It was then, and still is, the first urban recirculating system fish farm producing mature fish in Quebec.
David and Nicolas receive about 40,000 eggs once a year from a Canadian hatchery that specializes in fish genetics and aims to produce the most sickness-resistant, resilient fish stocks possible. More resilient fish means less sickness, less mortality, less need to treat for disease, etc. The eggs hatch, and then over the next 14 months they swim and eat in those tanks. 14 months! That’s how long it takes to bring a beef to maturity in a feed lot! That’s three times the growth period for a chicken! The fish grow at surprisingly varying rates, and so over the course of those 14 months David and Nicolas continuously triage, separating them by size into different tanks, and once a week capture market ready fish to fulfill that week’s orders.
We have recently started to carry whole char and char filets from Opercule at the shop. To think that the fish is raised, killed and processed so nearby, travels such a negligible distance to our fridge, leaves such a small mark on the environment (energy requirements aside, almost no environmental impact at all!) makes me almost giddy. Come try!
