Overview
- Researchers collected about 360,000 eggs from captive-reared females in October 2025, achieved artificial fertilization, and produced roughly 40,000 hatchlings.
- Kinki University reports it is currently rearing approximately 6,000–7,200 juveniles from this cohort, now several centimeters in length.
- The university plans to serve the farmed fish in Tokyo and Osaka in February and aims to sell fry to aquaculture operators within about five years.
- Techniques such as using ~20°C seawater drawn from around 100 meters and managing dissolved oxygen helped lift juvenile survival to about 20% from roughly 0.1%.
- Remaining challenges include a strong male-skewed sex ratio of over 90% in artificially hatched fish, disease control, stable production methods, and a roughly three-year grow-out to market size.