Coral Coast Farm Facts

90% of our staff are marine biologists and scientists, ensuring that best practices and technology are inherent in our operation. Our team love fish, and when they aren’t working on the farm they are often found boating in the surrounding reefs and islands, and simply enjoying the tropical landscape we call home.

Our 100% saltwater farm is located at Bowen in the northern Whitsunday region, part of the dry tropics, Queensland’s driest coastal region, where water is available all year with minimal reliance on tropical rainfall. The reef comes very close to the coast and the water is blue and clear, making it an ideal place to farm fish. We have an intake pumping station located on a sandy beach and this ensures we have consistently high quality, exceptionally clean saltwater. This water is flowing constantly into the channel that feeds into our concrete raceways, hatchery and nursery ponds. The water quality is monitored by a state of the art monitoring system and is cleaned and cycled into and out of our ponds. With the Great Barrier Reef as our neighbour we are faced with an overriding responsibility to help ensure the conservation of this delicate and diverse marine ecosystem.

Our initial breeding stock came from local stock, found naturally in the clear coastal waters around our farm. We have been breeding our own stock for over 15 years and have a very specialised breeding and genetics programme in place. Our brood stock are housed on-site in large saltwater tanks where they are looked after by marine biologists 24 hours a day 365 days a year. They receive specialised feed for their breeding cycle and clean sterilised water. Controlled lighting and temperature ensure they are happy enough to spawn naturally when they feel the urge. Due to our breeding programme we know the full genetic make-up of all our fish and have DNA traceability right back to the parent fish. With over ‘100 Mums & Dads’ in our breeding programme, we can ensure that only the fastest growing, healthiest and best performing fish are selected. We know all the different families in our breeding pool and new generation stock replaces old generation, so we ensure no in-breeding occurs. Apart from supplying fish for our own farm, and our sister farm – Spring Creek Barramundi, we also supply dams for recreational fishing, thereby taking pressure off wild caught stock.

Not only have we developed our own secret recipe made on site for our broodstock, we have built a feed trial facility to develop new feeds with our supplier, Ridley Aquafeed. With no wild caught fish protein being included, we have multiple trial diets working towards a more sustainable future of the natural marine environment. All feed for our fish is specially formulated for barramundi by expert nutritionists and made in Australia.