konablue's Profile

Hi - I work in marketing for Kona Blue and just came across this post. Thanks for the interest in what we're doing... I wanted to clarify a couple of things. We are raising Kona Kampachi, which is a Hawaiian yellowtail (in the amberjack family), not a tuna. And Whole Foods discontinued carrying our fish when we changed the feed formulation to reduce the amount of fishmeal and fish oil, which was recommended to us by environmental groups. We included poultry meal in the reformulated food in order to meet the nutritional requirements of our fish. Whole Foods has a policy to not carry aquacultured fish that has been fed poultry meal, due to the fact that many of their vegetarian customers do not want land-based animals in the nutrient chain. (This decision had nothing to do with the Chinese melamine scare.) Our feed is very high quality, carefully monitored, and is highly sustainable. In fact, our Kona Kampachi has recently been ranked as a "Good Alternative" by the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program. This is the first time that a net pen marine aquacultured fish has been ranked anything other than "Red: Avoid." Again, thank you all for your interest! Aloha.