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Northern and Southern California seafood fans say they’re buying giant lobster claws sold at Costco stores, and photos on Instagram and Reddit suggest each claw is much larger than a human hand. Screenshot from Instagram ================================================================= Seafood lovers on Instagram and Reddit are freaking out over photos showing gigantic lobster claws, and those posting the pictures say they bought them at Costco stores. “This thing is unreal!” one Instagram user wrote this week, sharing a couple of photos of a massive claw in Southern California’s Newport Beach. “I mean, come on. I’ve seen a few big claws at Costco...

U.S. Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) has filed a bill that he said would further develop the aquaculture industry in the country. S. 3138, named the “Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture Act,” calls for the creation of the Office of Marine Aquaculture within NOAA Fisheries. That office would oversee regulatory issues within NOAA and push for development opportunities to spur aquaculture’s growth, especially within the country’s exclusive economic zones. “Aquaculture is the fastest-growing sector of the agriculture industry,” Wicker said in a press release. “This bill would give farmers a clear, simplified regulatory path to start new businesses...

HIXTON, Wis. (WKBT) - Nestled in the small town of Hixton, Wisconsin, sits a one-of-a-kind farm. Superior Fresh is the first of its kind indoor Atlantic Salmon farm in the country and it's one of the largest aquaponics facilities in the world. The facility combines aquaculture and hydroponics, where waste from fish will be used to supply nutrients for plants grown in water. The 720-acre-farm uses recirculating technologies that collect water and reuse it to grow plants. That water is collected from the aquaculture systems which carry 120,000 pounds of Atlantic salmon. Nutrient-rich water from the fish is then used...

Bloomberg. Excerpts not allowed.

Humans are eating more fish than ever. And since 2014, most of what we eat has come not from the wild, but from fish farms operated by the fast-growing aquaculture industry. But what do these farmed fish eat? The answer is just as unappetizing as it sounds — and just as worrisome to advocates of sustainable seafood. The typical fish-farm diet (“aquafeed,” in industry parlance) contains fish — specifically fish meal and fish oil, made largely from wild-caught “forage” fish. And because stocks of wild fish are declining, that poses a serious long-term problem for the world food supply. Wild...

Cooke Aquaculture sites in Annapolis Basin, Shelburne Harbour, Jordan Bay reporting mortalities Fish at three aquaculture sites in Nova Scotia have died and a so-called superchill is suspected, the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture said Tuesday. Cooke Aquaculture's sites in the Annapolis Basin, Shelburne Harbour and Jordan Bay are reporting mortalities, officials said. A fish health veterinarian visited the Annapolis Basin and Shelburne Harbour sites and is expected to visit the Jordan Bay site in the next few days to investigate the cause of death, Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Keith Colwell said in a statement. "Our provincial fish health...

At least 30 people have contracted a rare skin infection after buying seafood at markets in Chinese neighborhoods across New York City, prompting health officials to issue a warning to consumers and market workers to take precautions when handling raw or live fish. The source of the outbreak was unclear, but health officials said that all of the people who were infected had bought fish at markets in Sunset Park, Brooklyn; Flushing, Queens; or Chinatown, in Manhattan. There was no evidence that eating fish from any of those markets could cause illness, officials said. “People are encouraged to wear waterproof...

Phrases like “lessons from the past” or “learning from ancient history” are apt to make our eyes glaze over, and we flash to memories of boring history classes or droning TV documentaries. But in the case of aquaculture, a little historical knowledge can be both entertaining and enlightening. Fish farming is not new; it has been practiced for centuries in many cultures. Ancient Chinese societies fed silkworm feces and nymphs to carp raised in ponds on silkworm farms, Egyptians farmed tilapia as part of their elaborate irrigation technology, and Hawaiians were able to farm a multitude of species such as...

Fish farming has had a bad rap, but will continue to grow quickly, may be the only way to meet rising demand for seafood and isn't necessarily an environmental problem, a U.S. scientist says. The catch from traditional fishing fisheries has remained about constant for 20 years, but production from aquaculture has risen 8.8 per cent per year since 1985, James S. Diana of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor said in an assessment published Friday.

Fishermen who offload at Shrimp Landing in Crystal River could share the Gulf of Mexico someday with huge cages growing what they now go out and catch. Robert Gill, owner of the fish house and commercial dock, said fishermen might fret about competition from fish farming if they weren't so worried about dwindling domestic stocks and rising imports that now account for 80 percent of seafood on American plates. About half those imports come from foreign fish farms. The United States shares less than 1 percent of a $70 billion global aquaculture business. To Gill that means the United States...

In the basement of an ivy-covered building on the surprisingly leafy campus of Brooklyn College is something even more surprising: thousands of tilapia packed tighter than a subway car into 300-gallon fiberglass fish tanks. Overseeing this watery domain is professor emeritus Martin Schreibman, director of the college's Aquatic Research and Environmental Assessment Center. A mild-tasting fish that was unfamiliar here a few years ago, tilapia is increasingly available in the United States, almost all of it farmed and imported from China and Central and South America. Schreibman hopes to change that. He believes that urban aquaculture _ raising fish in...

'Desert fish will help to feed the world' By Max Benitz (Filed: 05/06/2006) Deserts will produce much of the farmed fish and the clean power of the future, a United Nations report says. Aquaculture already thrives in deserts such as the Negev in Israel and Arizona, according to the report published to mark World Environment Day. It says saline water in desert wells and sunlight can be used to mimic tropical seas, making them ideal for farming fish and shrimp. Another benefit is that fish farming uses less water than the production of a vegetable crop. Many fish and algae...

Coastside commercial fishermen were pleased that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Friday signed the Sustainable Oceans Act, severely restricting future fish-farming along the California coast. The act, authored by Palo Alto Democrat Joe Simitian, allows ocean farming operations but requires stringent environmental protections that industry experts are calling the toughest in the nation. Coastside fisherman Pietro Parravano, president of the Institute of Fishery Resources, said Saturday the new rules should help protect marine ecosystems and water quality. He said the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association had lobbied for passage of the act. There are currently no finfish aquaculture operations on the...

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Friday that will make California the first state in the country to adopt comprehensive controls on fish farming, a growing industry that ocean advocates say is a threat to the marine environment. The state Fish and Game Commission will issue permits and regulate businesses that want to raise penned fish off the coast under the legislation authored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. The new law is aimed at a new industry, dubbed aquaculture, which has sprung up in coastal states. California, which does not currently have any coastal fish farms, will...

Please read note in first comment. "It may seem strange that so much effort* is being focused on an animal that 25 years ago was known to only a handful of Antarctic scientists and that went by the ungainly name of Patagonian toothfish. But Chilean sea bass today have become the signature species in a battle of global proportions. Put in very blunt terms, the world is running out of fish. According to a study published in July in Science, marine species diversity has declined by 10 to 50 percent in the last half-century, and a 2003 report found that...

SCIENTISTS who bred Australia's first hatchery-reared southern rock lobsters have achieved the biological equivalent of "putting man on the moon" Fisheries Minister Senator Ian Macdonald said today. Scientists at the University of Tasmania made the breakthrough, which shortened the normal two year development of an adult lobster to one year. Mr Macdonald said the research could put Australia ahead of the pack in the future commercialisation of lobster farming. "This is a major achievement in the move towards sustainable farming of lobsters and will provide significant opportunities for the future," Mr Macdonald said. Attempts to develop commercial aquaculture of the...

<p>The oceans of the world are being overfished. The solution: roaming robots that bring fish farming to the open seas.</p> <p>About 9 miles southeast of New Hampshire, near the Isles of Shoals, what seems to be an ordinary yellow navigation buoy sways in the Atlantic chop. Like a regular buoy, it's a metal cylinder that extends 10 feet above the surface and blinks its lights to warn away passing ships. Unlike a regular buoy, though, it has an access hatch that leads to an inner chamber crammed with enough electronics to merit its own IT staff. Indeed, this may be the first buoy in history that had its launch delayed by a software glitch.</p>

<p>Move over, Bubba Gump. The first shrimp farm in the state is coming to Hamilton.</p> <p>A former Army officer who won startup money for his venture in a business contest plans to begin raising shrimp in saltwater-filled tanks as early as this fall.</p>

Thirty-three miles west-southwest of John's Pass, in a part of the Gulf of Mexico where the water is more than 100 feet deep, a Madeira Beach company wants to start a farm. The crop: fish. The company's plan calls for raising thousands of cobia, amberjack and other species in conical net cages anchored to the sandy bottom. Once the fish are big enough, they would be sold to seafood companies. If Florida Offshore Aquaculture gets federal permits for a two-year experiment, the company's founders will establish the first fish farm ever attempted off Florida's coast, and one of the first...