Swiss tunnel boost for caviar farm
2 February 2012Warm drain water from the Lotschberg Base Tunnel is being used to feed Switzerland’s first sturgeon and caviar farm, the ‘Tropenhaus’ at Fruitigen between the tunnel and Bern. According to Bloomberg, this was an idea of Peter Hufschmied, an engineer in charge of diverting the recently completed tunnel’s drain water.
The warm water (20 degrees Celsius) can help grow and mature the fish so that it can be harvested at six years old. The wild sturgeon, also threatened by extinction, can take 20 years before reproduction. The water, which is too warm to discharge into the Kander River is also used to heat a tropical greenhouse. The Tropenhaus farm’s branded 101 Oona caviar sells at about 60 per cent of the price of Beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea.
