Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/03/2009 12:17:16 PM PST by decimon
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Bad rap and other parasites ping.
Although, I don’t know that I disagree with this.
Now, if we could arrange to feed the fish locusts...
Thanks decimon. This could be a good business for Michiganders.
Put the fish on an assembly line. One can feed them, another pick lice...
More sauce, less rice.
Aquaculture works a lot better at sea than in coastal areas. It’s not particularly hard. Nets descending from anchored pontoons, with hatchery fish raised inside the nets, the water kept clean and aerated by the ocean current.
This avoids coastal pollution, and a lot of the parasite and disease problems.
Importantly, while enormous fish farms could provide huge amounts of food, the technique can also be used to restore populations depleted through overfishing. After they are a certain size, then nets are moved so that they will meet up with the natural fish of their species, then opened, hopefully to cause a “breeding frenzy”.
I say we should UNILATERALLY fertilize (lightly to prevent overgrowth of algae) the areas of the Southern Ocean that currently produce little biomass. Huge amounts of CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere while providing billions of pounds of seafood for the world’s poorest nations. In most of that ocean, the only nutrient missing is iron, so we’re talking trace amounts. Oh yeah, then we sell carbon credits to anyone dumb enough to buy them.
Is that being done?
Hmmm...it's being proposed that we seed the seaborne, I think, Antarctic ice with iron to melt it because that will counteract global warming because...something.
But feeding the fish corn (and usually the most chemically-laden corn at that) completely eliminates the omega 3 fats that make fish so healthy for us to eat. I avoid farmed fish for that reason.
If you would like to be added or dropped from the Michigan ping list, please freepmail me.
Farm raised fish is terrible for you. They feed fish corn and garbage and have made them fat, disgusting, non food like they have with everything in the stores. Fish do not eat corn folks, Talapia is a garbage fish, do not eat it.
Gracious! You all should review the [71] comments from the CBCnews.ca readers. Some very informed commentary. Most especially about the parasite problem.
Unfortunately, I ain’t equipped to say, but there are quite a few weighing in saying the regional farmed-salmon-poop problem is being unfairly blamed for the fact that Victoria, BC is still discharging untreated waste into the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
(you have to work your way through the local political lip-splittin’).
I saw video of a test site, but I don’t know if it is being done on a large scale. I gather they use a double net, the inside one to keep the fish in, and the outside one to keep out “biologicals” that would eat fish.
Other than the pontoons and the nets, there is a small boat to both move the net as needed, to store the fish food, and as a place to sleep for the divers who pull maintenance on the nets.
Something like this is needed, as the overfishing is really starting to become a problem. Countries like Japan have zero self control, even if it eventually destroys the entire Japanese fishing industry, and some countries are so vigorously poaching each others fish that it is leading to conflict on the high seas.
Thanks.
A problem for as long as I can recall. Many years ago I was something of a 'Save the Whales' type because that wasn't really about hugging whales but about a need for some international agreements regarding all harvesting of the oceans. Since then there have been some agreements and, I think, all nations with a coast have claimed fishing rights out to 200 miles.
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