Fishy proposal from Commerce
US COMMERCE Secretary Carlos Gutierrez is promoting legislation to authorize and regulate fish farming in federal waters off the nation's seacoasts, and he chose the seafood convention in Boston last week to kick off the latest pitch for the measure. Fish are such a nutritious source of protein that an expansion of aquaculture should be a motherhood issue. But if the law does not include enough protections against the downsides of fish farming, Mother Nature will be the loser.
Aquaculture is a huge and growing global industry. According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, almost half of all fish consumed worldwide comes from farms. Gutierrez in an interview said it is an industry worth $70 billion globally, but just $1 billion in the United States. According to Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Americans import 80 percent of all the seafood they eat, with at least 40 percent of that coming from overseas fish farms.
The NOAA bill would establish a regulatory framework for fish farming beyond the 3-mile limit under control of the states. Existing marine fish farms have already polluted shore waters with fish excrement, uneaten fish food, and antibiotics. There have also been incidents of interbreeding of escaped farm fish with wild fish, weakening genetic characteristics in the latter. Locating fish farms in federal waters farther from shore might help dilute the pollution problems, but critics of the new bill like Rebecca Goldburg, senior scientist with Environmental Defense, say the bill's terms for environmental protection are still not strong enough.
The overarching problem in the farming of high-value fish like salmon or tuna is that they are not an alternative to wild-caught fish -- they depend on them. Fish farming can be sustainable when the fish, such as catfish and carp, eat mostly vegetable matter and not feed made of sardines, anchovies, herring, and mackerel. But these smaller fish are the standard diet for many species of farmed fish, such as salmon. On average, 1 pound of farmed fish requires 5 pounds of wild-caught fish, but the ratio can be as high as 20 pounds of wild fish to 1 pound of farmed fish in the case of tuna.
Intensive harvesting of the smaller species to support cultivation of carnivorous fish could leave the smaller species as depleted as North Atlantic groundfish stocks are. This, in turn, would be disastrous for the wild salmon, tuna, and halibut that depend on the smaller species.
Researchers are at work on more vegetarian diets for farm-raised carnivorous fish. But until they come up with some, there is no reason to pass legislation opening up new waters for fish farming, especially if the bill does not include environmental standards far more demanding than the industry has met so far.
