Finger Lakes Fish: New Auburn Salmon Farm First of Many Across Country

AUBURN — Soon, the salmon you eat could be from Auburn.

Finger Lakes Fish, a new aquaculture business, is getting off the ground inside a 43,000-square-foot facility on Technology Park Boulevard. Founded by CEO Ed Heslop, of Aurora, the business raises coho salmon and sells them to high-end restaurants and grocers under the LocalCoho brand name. The Auburn facility is the first of a dozen Finger Lakes Fish plans to open across the country.

The Citizen toured the facility Thursday with Heslop and general manager Phil Gibson. It smelled like the seaside, and required a disinfecting foot bath to enter.

There were about 100,000 fish inside the facility. About 10,000 of them were swimming in a raceway, a tank of oxygenated water 6 feet deep, 16 feet wide and 80 feet long. A second raceway of that size was empty, undergoing maintenance. And the business plans to build seven more of those raceways to reach its ultimate production goal: 2,000 fish a week, or 450 tons a year.

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