A TOTAL of $300,000 a hectare — that’s how much Rob Bartley hopes to be making off the fish ponds on his Queensland farm within the next two years.

In just six years he has becomethe largest Murray cod farmer in Australia — and, therefore, the world — and is reaping the benefits of soaring demand for the fish, which are fetching $20 a kilogram wholesale at Sydney Fish Markets.

The Bartley family ran cattle and have grown cotton on the Darling Downs in Queensland since the early 1900s. But father-of-four Mr Bartley, 37, has defied family tradition and is now more used to wading through water than sitting on a tractor.

Nine years ago, keen to diversify and worried about the future of dry land farming, Mr Bartley went with his father, Keith, to Australia’s first national aquaculture conference. Much has changed in the interim, with the family becoming pioneers in a rapidly evolving industry.

A great surprise has been the success of Murray cod, an unlikely prospect for domestication.

Once the most popular eating fish in the country, with thousands of tonnes being pulled from Australia’s inland rivers each year, it is now endangered.

Excited by what they saw at their first conference, the Bartleys bought a grazing property 300km west of Brisbane, adjacent to the Condamine River.

“The great thing is Murray cod are a freshwater fish which taste much like saltwater fish, have brilliant white flesh and flake easily, ” Mr Bartley said. “They are Australia’s biggest freshwater fish, they grow more than a kilogram every year and you can farm them at high density.

“They are an ambush predator by nature. They eat almost anything, including each other. They sit on the bottom and only move if they see food in the water. When you jump into the raceways, you almost trip over them. They want you to move. They think they’re the boss.”

The Bartley farm operates on a floodwater harvesting licence from the Condamine River, the same licence cotton irrigators use to replenish their dams. But unlike cotton farmers, their water is constantly recycled by filtering it through wetlands. “We are not a large water user. The only water we lose is from evaporation,” Mr Bartley said.

Organisers of the third Australasian international aquaculture conference, to be held in Brisbane next week, claim the $800 million aquaculture industry will double within seven years.

“Asian, European and American markets are hungry for quality seafood,” National Aquaculture Council chairman Craig Foster said. “Wild-catch fisheries are increasingly depleted, particularly in Europe and Asia, at the same time as demand for seafood continues to grow.”

World renowned fish expert Nigel Preston, from the CSIRO, said aquaculture was at the same stage as agriculture several hundred years ago, with wild stocks being domesticated and selectively bred. While past predictions about the industry’s rosy future were never realised, contemporary concerns over water, climate and food shortages meant aquaculture’s time had arrived.

“The industry is about to undergo a renaissance,” he said.

“The research is now in, thehard work and expense devoted to ensuring high-quality environmental management has been done.”

Credit: John StapletonA