Posted on 04/08/2005 7:16:40 AM PDT by Dog Gone
NEW ORLEANS - Thousands of oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico could be converted into deep-sea fish farms raising red snapper, mahi-mahi, yellowfin tuna and flounder, under a plan backed by the Bush administration.
For years, marine biologists and oil companies have experimented using the giant platforms as bases for mariculture, but commercial use of the platforms as fish farms never got off the ground because of the federal government's reluctance to open up the oceans to farming.
Yet in December, President Bush proposed making it easier to launch fish farms off the nation's coasts. That could be done by resolving a "confounding array of regulatory and legal obstacles," White House officials said.
Fish farming in the rough-and-tumble ocean, done by enclosing thousands of fish in submerged pens serviced by scuba divers, is limited commercially to waters within state jurisdiction, where permits have tended to be easier to get. Moi is grown in Hawaii, and cobia is farmed near Puerto Rico. Salmon farming is common, but it takes place mostly in the calm waters of fjords and bays.
But, fish farmers say, the future is rosy and fast approaching.
"In Asia, they're starting to creep off into the open waters; there's a lot of talk of doing it in Ireland. In the Mediterranean, they are now looking at moving out into open waters and experimenting with new cages," said Richard Langan, who heads the University of New Hampshire's Open Ocean Aquaculture program. He is experimenting with a variety of species — cod, Atlantic halibut, haddock, summer flounder and mussels.
With seafood now accounting for about $7 billion in the nation's foreign trade deficit, advocates of deep-sea farming say mariculture would bolster American seafood production and provide much-needed employment to coastal communities harmed by the eclipse of traditional fishing.
"Aquaculture is an issue that is here, and now we're already in the middle of it, and how is the U.S. going to play in the game?" said Michael Rubino, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's aquaculture coordinator. "It's already being done in a big way in Korea, Taiwan and China. In the U.S., we'd like to start small, prove the concept and learn by doing."
The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy recommended in its report last year to move forward with offshore aquaculture, but to hold it to high environmental standards.
In a response to the commission's report, Bush in his "Ocean Action Plan" listed offshore farming legislation as a priority this year.
The new frontier is federal waters, Rubino said.
"There's no good framework in terms of where this should be done, how it should be done, how the rules of the game should be applied," he said.
The Gulf could be just the place where such a framework is developed.
Oil and gas platforms function as barnlike bases: They're big enough to store feed, their deck winches and cranes can lift and drop pens in and out of the water, and fish farmers can spend the night onboard.
And unlike many in Florida and California, the people along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas by and large welcome the offshore industry and its array of spindly legged and blinking rigs and platforms.
There are an estimated 3,500 idle platforms in the Gulf — and each one of them could be a candidate for a new lease on life as a fish farm.
"The oil companies are looking for a way of leaving platforms in place and delaying the disassembly and expensive process of dismantling and removing a platform," said George Chamberlain, president of the St. Louis-based Global Aquaculture Alliance.
It costs about $2 million to bring a platform ashore, said Granvil Treece, an aquaculture specialist at the Texas Sea Grant, but under another option, the "Rigs-to-Reefs" program, converting a platform into an artificial reef costs about $800,000. Chamberlain said the cost of production in fish farming continues to decline.
So far, farming from the Gulf's platforms has only been experimental. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, Occidental Petroleum Corp. teamed up with Texas Sea Grant scientists to grow redfish. Feeding the penned fish brought out some ingenious ideas and presented some problems.
Project officials learned computers could be used to open feed gates. With so many platforms far out in the Gulf, a boat can't go out every day to unload fish feed as farmers do with salmon in the fjords of Scandinavia and North America.
Severe storms damaged some pens, and fish got out. And Treece said studies show that the ocean-raised redfish worked out to cost a whopping $22 a pound, whereas redfish sold for $3.50 a pound at market.
Also, just to run the platform's navigational lights and fight off corrosion cost about $50,000 a year, he said.
While advocates believe it could work and be profitable, it's less sure whether any legislation Bush proposes will get the support of environmentalists. Critics worry about turning the nation's oceans into the equivalent of ugly, dirty fish feedlots.
Not to worry, Treece said, who believes the Gulf's strong currents "should take care of that," he said. "The solution to pollution is dilution, and that's what you got out here — lots of dilution."
Another concern: Hatchery-raised fish could be put out in open-water farms, escape into the wild and corrupt wild populations' genetic pools.
Alaskan fishermen, for example, warn that Atlantic salmon bred in fish farms are infiltrating their wild stocks.
The efficiency of fish farming is another question. Fish farmers have been known to feed 8 pounds of fish for every pound of fish they raise, said Andy Rosenberg, a U.S. Ocean Commission member and former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Fish farming, he said, "has the potential to produce high-quality seafood, but you need to do it carefully, and it needs to be managed in a comprehensive way."
I am just waiting to see the California delegation go "nuts" on this idea.
What a stinkin cool idea. Love it.
If they can make it work, it's going to be great. The oil companies will love it. Consumers will love it, and fish farmers will love it.
Bizarrely, water around an oil rig has less oil in it (and is better for fish) than water above an untapped oil claim. This is because the seeps beneath the rig have been drained.
Nothing fishy about this idea.
I predict more farm subsidies - on the order of $20/pd for each fish. I tell you what. Give me $10/pd to NOT raise fish, and the taxpayers will save a lot of money. I plano on not raising 100,000 pounds a year, so just have the government mail me a check for $1,000,000.00 and the taxpayers will save an equal amount.
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