Taking the bait

Facing leaner times, the globe's leading tropical fish farm can't resist the lure of - what else? - a developer.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 28, 2003

[Times photos: Skip O'Rourke] Cody Costner pulls a net across a pond last week to harvest guppies at EkkWill Waterlife Resources. The farm plans to keep only 50 of its 350 acres in Gibsonton but continue producing about 8-million fish a year.

GIBSONTON -- The world's largest producer of tropical fish is selling most of its Hillsborough County farmland to a South Florida home developer in what owners describe as a sign of the sinking tropical fish industry.

EkkWill Waterlife Resources, owned since 1981 by brothers Mike and Tim Hennessy and Tim's wife, Sherry, is negotiating a contract to sell nearly 300 of its 350 acres in Gibsonton.

The sale will allow EkkWill to pay off bank debts and to "right-size" its operation to the demand for tropical fish, which has shrunk in recent years, Tim Hennessy said.

"I've just got too much land now. It's like this machine with one speed, where we can't slow it down, even though the demand is slower. In this business, you sell 'em or smell 'em."

Live guppies pulled from a pond await a temporary tank.

EkkWill can continue producing about 8-million fish a year in ponds on the remaining 50 acres, Hennessy said, and the company has another 167 acres in DeSoto County.

"The difference will be, we can actually sell everything we produce for a good rate, and turn over the ponds as fast as we want," he said.

EkkWill and more than 170 other tropical fish farms in Florida account for most of the world's tropical fish production; Hillsborough County alone produces 80 percent.

But industrywide, sales have dropped by as much as 30 percent since 1997, as mom-and-pop pet stores have closed and children have become more interested in video games than aquariums. EkkWill's sales peaked in 1995 and have since gone down by half, to about $5-million a year, Hennessy said.

Co-owner Sherry Hennessy sends fish on a flight.

Net sales of tropical fish were flat in 2001, totaling $42.4-million, about the same as in 1999, according to the most recent report from the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service. Twenty-two tropical fish producers went out of business between 1999 and 2001.

David Corbett, who operates a 10-acre farm in Ruskin, is struggling after 18 years. Not only is the market slumping, but his fish aren't reproducing as rapidly as they used to, and he's not sure why.

"You can't make money in farming. Big surprise, right?" Hennessy said. "So if you can't make money from the land, you've got to sell."

Tiger barbs add local color to a tank at EkkWill.

Of the 300 EkkWill acres being sold to Southeast Community Development LLC, nearly half are ponds.

The same company recently bought 92 acres adjacent to the EkkWill property off Symmes Road and plans to combine the two parcels for a housing development, said land-use consultant Bonnie Rubishaw.

Hennessy did not disclose the sale price. He expects to close the deal by summer.

EkkWill has no plans to lay off employees, which range from 80 during the off-season to 100 during peak production. But the company will freeze new hires and decrease the work force through natural attrition, Hennessy said.

Karey Hoskins, middle, hands off a net full of guppies as Cody Costner in back reels in his net. Ponds dot half the acreage EkkWill is selling.

Hennessy plans to apply to the county for a zoning classification that would allow a developer to buy EkkWill's remaining 50 acres and have it automatically zoned for homes.

"We're hoping that raises the land's value, because a developer won't have to wait six months to go through the county rezoning process," Hennessy said. "We're just trying to think ahead."

He insists that EkkWill is far from extinct.

"I've got two kids in college, and we know that's not cheap, right?" he said. "And my brother's got four kids, one in college, the youngest 8 years old. We'll be here a while."

-- Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 661-2443 or svansickler@sptimes.com .

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