Free Republic

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...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.Environmentalists Hope New Breed Will Revive Chesapeake's Shellfish Industry ACCOMAC, Va. -- One million disease-resistant Asian oysters, bred to grow plumper and faster than their native counterparts, are being introduced to the Chesapeake Bay in hopes of reviving the bay's suffering bivalve industry. Stan Allen, a geneticist at the Virginia Institute of Marine sciences, on Monday released fingerling oysters from orange nylon onion sacks into Folly Creek, a bay tributary. Allen has bred the Asian oysters, or Crassostrea ariakensis, to have three chromosomes, which renders them sterile and gives them a growing...

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...