Inside Toomulla’s tropical rock lobster hatchery

For the first time ever, an Aussie species of lobster is being commercially raised - and it’s happening 45 minutes outside Townsville. Watch the video of baby lobsters.

It’s taken $25 million and four years, but Ornatas is confident they can raise commercial volumes of tropical rock lobster at their Toomulla hatchery, outside Townsville.

Ornatas chief executive Scott Parkinson said the hatchery is the result of “45 years of science”.

“For us, setting up the hatchery near Townsville was very attractive because of the employment, proximity to James Cook University and supply of materials,” Mr Parkinson said.

The site has 30 full-time employees, and several staff are JCU graduates.

It’s the first time ever the native lobster has been grown by the seafood industry.

Ornatas CEO Scott Parkinson, hatchery manager Jennifer Blair and QLD Agriculture Minister Mark Furner.

Right now, tropical rock lobsters are 100 per cent wild caught - mainly from the Torres Strait via spear or hand fishing, as they rarely enter crab pots.

The Toomulla hatchery is home to large adult lobsters which serve as ‘breeding stock’ and rotate between winter and summer tanks to simulate conditions in the wild.

The females carry hundreds of eggs along their tails that turn into microscopic larvae, which are carefully raised through 11 larval stages to become lobsters.

Then, Ornatas starts beefing them up to a premium 1.2kg weight.

Most of the rooms run in darkness, with small ultraviolet lights over the tanks.

In some areas, no photography is allowed to avoid the research being stolen.

QLD Agriculture Minister Mark Furner and Member for Mundingburra Les Walker with some of the juveniles who'll make up the first commercial batch of Ornatas lobsters in 2024/25.

Over the next 18 months, Ornatas expects to spend $20 million of private investor money to get them “to scale”.

Their hungriest customers are the middle class Chinese, who’ve already offered to buy the first batch of Toomulla-raised lobsters in 2024.

“Our first proper lobsters will be ready in late 2024/2025 and we’ll steadily increase the numbers,” Mr Parkinson said.

“We hope to reach 50 tonnes of product per year.”

After a recent hatchery expansion, the Toomulla site has the capacity to house 100,000 juveniles.

Standing outside the Toomulla facility, Agriculture Minister Mark Furner announces an extra $7.5 million to boost aquaculture in QLD.

Ornatas was created when the University of Tasmania discovered a way to raise tropical rock lobster larvae in captivity.

The business took a hold of the opportunity and in 2018 created a ‘pilot nursery’ in Toomulla, seizing on Queensland government initiatives.

On Wednesday (March 8) Queensland Agriculture Minister Mark Furner toured the site and announced an extra $7.5 million to boost aquaculture development in QLD.

“We want Queensland to be the aquaculture capital of the world,” Mr Furner said.

“In Townsville alone there was a 100 per cent increase in full-time aquaculture jobs, going from 109 to 218 employees.”

The $7.5 million will go towards improving regulations, funding research, and setting up an ‘aquaculture incubator’.

Originally published as Inside Toomulla’s tropical rock lobster hatchery