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There are some really good results coming from this method. Best part is that some of the companies are using these fish corals as mobile fencing (like cattle herders did) and imitating the natural feeding habits of multiple endangered species, while also keeping out invasive/detrimental species.
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With extreme caution, we have entire ecosystems in Tasmania that are struggling due to the impact of fish farming. Then look at the fake food ration the fish are fed and the resulting nutritional content of the meat afterwards. I believe it can be done but profit should not be driving it.
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Same problem in Malta. The feed given causes lots of sludge that washes up on beaches & coastline. And most of the fish farmed is shipped to Japan (other side of the world) as a delicacy, not to feed any hungry.
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Albertus Hanekom only if it’s sustainable though…O/S trawlers dragging the ocean clean of every living thing to make fish food pellets to feed fish to eat…something not quite right there??
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There was recently a fish farm in BC that had a large quantity of fish, not from that eco system, get out and there are still cleaning up the mess. There are many problems, disease etc. Fish do not do well in pens.
Reply Disease alone is devastating!!! Then we release antibiotics directly into the ocean!
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The Salmon that this makes are sick, and recommended not to eat, because the meat is not healthy…..
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Better cases for seaweed farming. Although I don’t like seaweed it’s a much better option
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Ive been to Bruny Island Tasmania and seen fish farm ponds. They have issues with the excreta. Salmonella. Maybe combine with plants…aquaponics????
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An interesting argument. Its major premise, however, is to adjust to growth with more growth. An expanding human population requires more food. All solutions that don’t recognize that growth is ‘the’ problem will lead us to the same disastrous end. We need to wake up and deal with growth.
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Growth is not the problem, zoning and the meat industry is the major problem.
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Vertical Farming via Permaculture techniques. It’s a thing and it can be done to where farming fish actually works as an engine to repopulate the oceans AND feed people at the same time. Requires us to try new things and to do so with an abundance mentality and while listening to natures patterns.
Reply Salmon aquaculture like many forms of commercial farming demands the use of antibiotics and food additives. Chemical treatments for sea lice takes place in open sea pens that affect other species (lobster). In areas where wild salmon populations are in decline or endangered (Maine coast), land based salmon aquaculture technologies should be adopted. Farming the ocean is not the answer to feeding the world. Just look at the cost of salmon in your grocery store. This is not an effort to feed those threatened by food insecurity.
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What a mistake–such a simplistic endorsement of a potentially catastrophic industry! Do your homework, “Ecosnippets”!
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this is absolute horseshit! nice try aquaculture. a round of applause for your efforts with your smoke and mirrors. Fuck off and get out of our BC waters.
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Ning youo we should not ! Go look at the salmon industry if you want to know what it Will…
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Sounds good in theory but doesn’t work in practice. In Washington state waters the salmon farms are reacking havoc on the natural ecosystems and wild salmon here. The answer is carefully regulated wild fishing & INLAND aquaculture which while being a bit more expensive is way more eco-friendly.
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Wrong food alters the proteine, antibiotica, crowded population, lice …mmmmmmm … I wonder …
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Fishing natural resources sustainably is far better than fish farming where anti-biotics and single gene pool fish are used.
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No we must NOT start using the ocean as farmers….we already have a dying planet due in a large part to unsustainable FARMING methods. Wherever there’s farming there’s unsustainable greed and unfortunately avarice buries good sense every time. The ocean has already been raped, pillaged and polluted to an almost non recoverable state. What we need is to develop vast marine reserves and prevent the current abusers from finishing off the task to which they have applied themselves with sadly very sustainable fervour!
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Like any hi density farming system, it brings more problems (disease, pollution,damage to the other species) than solutions.
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Ask wa state and the current failure of Atlantic salmon farming pens, releasing thousands of Atlantic salmon into pacific waters how they feel. ?. And guess who is tasked with the cleanup efforts? Hint it wasn’t the company responsible for the failure.
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This method is fraught with danger. The fish must be pumped with chemicals / antibiotics/ hormones to grow them to maturity in such confinement.
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YA, AND LOOK AT THE POISON WE ARE EATING IN FARMING FISH—I AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS, AS THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT BIG PROFITS, NOT CARRING ABOUT THE OCEAN OR MY HEALTH: V.
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overcrowding, disease, antibiotics, GMO pellets, growth hormones, no quality of life, cruelty, trashes the oceans, attracts sharks, unhealthy food
Reply Anyone seen that program about Asian trawlers dragging the oceans clean of every living thing…then ground down into pellets to sell to fish farmers to feed farmed salmon (which we buy because there’s no wild caught fish left)…am I missing something here? ?
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hopefully the vegan movement will keep growing as well. I’m vegetarian but working towards veganism, just gotta find more fatty foods so I don’t wither away but I already don’t eat fish and there are so many people that are realzing animals are sentient and also going vegan/vegatarian. The more the merrier. If you want to try, go vegetarian first, its actually super easy and meat starts tasting nasty after a while. If you want to lost weight, go whole foods vegan.
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Ducking stupid as shit! We need to start replanting the seaweed forests. Farming fish is a terrible practice just like industrial fishing. It’s alllllllllll fucked and no one knows the solution because every single industry is eating every other industry and their workers. Love you, be kind, write better articles, youre welcome.
Reply Disease alone is devastating!!! Then we release antibiotics directly into the ocean!
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no fish farms they are a breeding ground for disased fish..as for fish, fresh or ocean fish..dont abuse it or you will lose it.
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OMG can we please stop repeating stupid mistakes based on thinking that humans can do better than Mother Nature itself! There are hundreds of super smart reasons why fish live naturally how they live! Let the animals live as they are meant to, so we don’t keep messing up everything that Mother Nature already made perfect. Geez. Why are we so blind??? Go find something else to do with your times and stop “inventing” “solutions” to the problems we created! Better expenditure of creativity might be made in undoing the problems we created? Capitalism is a failed system begging for creative fixes. Plenty to do there.
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I´m glad to see all the sceptical comments here. We have seen what happens in Norway, and now some profitmakers are trying to establish fish farms in the vulneralble inner waters of Denmark. Fish farming in the ocean is NOT at good idea. And it doesn´t bring more food – I heard that it takes as much as 7 kg feede to produce one kg fish. And have you ever tried a salmon from a fish farm? It has no structure, no taste, just a lump of BLAH. … nothing like the fish caught in the wild.
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I don’t support fish farming at all. Factory farming is factory farming. I won’t eat the stuff thats produced.
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Land-based aquaculture systems are the way to go. The waste products make fantastic fertilizer. Let the oceans stay wild.
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Not really hahaha. It’s super productive and simple to do. I’m aquaculturing tilapia in my apartment. Plus, it’s a closed system, so any parasites stay isolated. Net farms in the open ocean are breeding grounds for disease and often infect was me populations. Just a few months ago, thousands of Atlantic salmon escaped their pen off of the Washington coast, creating a massive disease risk for wild stocks.
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The day I “demand” for farmed fish is never going to happen. Wild and locally caught or else nothing at all.
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The celts off the coast of Ireland was fish farming thousands of years ago from a tree log enclosure and net suspended under the surface. SUSTAINABLY !
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That was more likely a form of trapping, as practiced by indigeoneous folk in my area for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Reply a hammock like net tied to the logs with a net for the bigger fish to be contained. whilst the contained fish was fed by the passing fry.
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They also wouldn’t have been running hundreds of farms with millions of fish in each farm, dumping tens of thousands of liters of pesticides and antibiotics in the water.
Cermac is trying to apply for a permit right now to dump around a million liters of hydrogen peroxide in my local waters, they can keep producing their dissed deformed fish…
So he means seaweed forests right? Cus if he just mean more cages animals then this is fucked.
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Sounds like ecosnippets is either part of-or has fallen for-a scam. Fish farming in Australia has polluted every inlet and bay it has been established in.
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And in Greece! The coast are crowded with fish farms and the bays are so polluted. So many of the fish from fish farms have abnormaly shaped fish, caused by the extreme overcrowding. This is not the way forward at all!!!
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Ecosnippets is a business trying to get you to sign up to buy plans and courses. Funded by clickbait. Interesting but search the ideas elsewhere for a wider view.
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Only because they are doing it wrong. Change the way you farm the oceans and it will be fine. Use human intelligence.
Or just become a vegetarian like me.
So far fish farming has been an environmental disaster. From introducing pathogens from Atlantic waters to the Pacific, to the detriment and decline of native salmon, destroying mangrove forests in the East and Pacific coasts….those mangroves are just as important as the declining coral reefs in terms of being nurseries for juvenile fish. And if anyone that reads this is eating farmed shrimp or prawns (farmed is anything not wild caught, no matter what the package says), let me tell you about the time that we were cleaning some recreationally caught wild prawns when Eddy, a Filipino arrived. He bragged that in his village the shrimp from their salt pond were much larger. He also said that much of the village waste, including dead cats and dogs, were tossed into the pond. Hungry?
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Yes, they are bottom dwellers and should not be eaten for that very reason. Consider how many food poisoning incidents proved so to our ancestors. Why are they proscribed as forbidden by several older religions? They are there to clean up the waste.
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I love seafood, but there are no safe or ethical seafood anymore. Garbage patch bouillabaisse any one? How about manure marinaded tilapia?
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There is far more evidence AGAINST fish farming than FOR fish farming with respect to quality of life, quality of product, hygiene, diseases spreading, and increased pollution of waters.
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Actually human biology requires a regular intake of meat to be healthy. You could however stop having so many kids instead
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Derek Leverknight I don’t eat meat, in fact many people I know don’t and we are healthier then most. You can get what you need without meat. I do however agree on the kid thing. Should have limits on family size
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That way they can destroy the oceans the way they have the land. Frankenfish…the ultimate GMO. Except with fish you actually eat the GMO animal matter taking it right into your body. Maybe a few Frankenpeople next?
But not to worry. Ecosnippets never bothers to read stuff before they post..as long as there is a pretty picture and catchy title it must be good.
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How much do they pay you, to write this bullshit.
Fish Farms are shit. It need to be on land so we can make the water clean again, and the fish cant esape.
Nooooooooooooooooooo! Its not a good idea. We need to eat less meat and top predatorian fish and eat more vegetables/greens and fish caught in the ocean. Fishfarming is using A LOT of recources and also is poisening our oceans with pectesides and waste!!!
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The trouble is, mankind wealthy think of food as more of a commodity rather than a necessity and they will keep raping the oceans in the name of profit rather than sustainability. This needs to be addressed.
Reply Desease, sea fleas, more insecticides and chemicals, masses of waste feed accumulating. Killing seals who get too close. Farmers do not improve the environment they work, they destroy the balance and leave it worse off, dead soils, no biodiversity, food chain disrupted, no prime predators. Bees die out. Butterflies and birds extinct.
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You have got to be kidding; marine fish farm is an unmitigated disaster for the environment and extremely inefficient way of producing low quality food.
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On land only – fully contained – and low on the food chain fish such as trout, tilapia. BACK OFF on the high nd fish like salmon or else they’ll go the way of cod and tuna – extinct!!
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Farmed salmon is some of the most toxic food there is and the surrounding waters are horribly polluted. Do some research…
Reply No we don’t. Do a taste comparison between a farm raised (in ocean cages) with a wild caught – in the ocean. The former tastes of the chems that they use to keep the fish ‘healthy ‘.
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We need to follow the “Back to Eden” gardening method and stop using chemical sprays & fertilizers that kill insects and microbs! 🙂
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Fukushima is still leaking 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean. It’s almost 7 years since the accident and it doesn’t look like it will be stopped anytime soon. I don’t think the ocean is the solution to raise any kind of seafood.
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Fish farming has been an absolute failure. Damage to local environment. Fish diseases and lice passed from farmed fish to wild fish. Farmed fish suffer serious health issues due to being confined, including high levels of stress, which causes constantly elevated cortisol levels, which causes all kinds of illnesses, including Cancer, which humans end up eating. No. No to farmed fish. No to fish of any kind. Humans don’t need it in their diets.
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P Enrico Alexander Varani – It’s not semantics – regular fish farming creates enormous amounts of pollution & a toxic end-product. “Ranching” allows nature to take care of waste products & creates a healthy, nutritious product.
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Why Farmed Salmon Are a Toxic ‘Junk Food’
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/03/24/why-farmed-salmon-are-toxic.aspx
Reply NO. These are merely breeding grounds for mutant fish. These farms must be filled with antibiotics and chemicals to keep the fish “ healthy”. Have you ever tasted a farm raised Salmon? It’ tastes like a mouth full of moth balls .
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It seems as if many do not understand this type of farming. Most if not all the issues spoken of here do not happen. The key is the open waters around the compounds. The concerns are true when raised in ponds or intensive type pools that are self-contained.
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Some serious environmental damage has been taking place in Tasmanian open waters due to fish farming. All to produce a second rate form of protein.
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It is a dirty industry-it needs lots of oversight. My worry is that it will be filled with poor management practices to increase profits, since monitoring is so expensive. I say–let’s work on cleaning up ocean pollution and climate remediation–and not go there.
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Really has no logic by it. Any form of eating is unsustainable then.
Takes less time to grow vegetables than to raise an adult cow for slaughter.
I still eat steak, but can’t let nonsense go by.
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The use of vast quantities of water to prepare Almonds for food production for humans is also a waste of precious resources. The packaging and transport of processed foods, including tofu, soy milk etc., is also a waste of finite resources. So no veganism is not the way forward. Management of finite resources is the way to go, buying locally produced seasonal food, reducing wasteful production, transport and packaging is a better use of resources for everyone.
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Cris Ward you can milk the same cow over and over, you cant keep getting steaks from the same cow, and vegetarians eat cheese, not vegans.
Reply Jacqueline Suffolk You’re cherry picking a single element to justify your argument.
Reply Vegans don’t eat any meats, including fish, poultry and eggs. They only eat plant foods.
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Load of crap…..aquaculture is the future …….besides fish poop feeds the dang bottom dwellers ,….learn your science .
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Nathan Anderson According to the industry (I checked about 5 industry web sites) takes 1 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of farmed salmon and 30 – 40 % of that feed comes from wild caught fish. (Salmon is the most abundant farmed sea food.) About 90 % of this wild fish is fit for human consumption so why not just eat the wild fish in sustainable quantities? This would remove the added problems of sea lice, disease, water pollution, removal of wild habitat to farm that also occurs with aquaculture.
Reply Fish farms are no better and probably worse than battery hens or any other caged creatures for consumption by man. They are fed pelleted food and antibiotics which spread into the surrounding area upsetting the ecosystem. The fish are packed into these pens with no room to swim, they are more susceptible to infectious diseases, hence the practice of using antibiotics. Man needs to manage what there is for the benefit of the planet not take, take, take because he can. A change of attitude not a change in farming is needed.
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So what you are suggesting is that we enslave the fish as we did with land animals and produce them as things instead of beings!?
let them be free until they get to anybody’s table.
Eat less fish and meat and increase the produce of vegetables in a biodynamic way in a sintropic environment where all layers of vegetation may grow and provide all animals and soils with the nutrientes required for all of us to Thrive.
But – we must use this resource WISELY. High concentrations of farmed fish fed non-native feed, change the composition of the flesh, & create obscene amounts of pollution.
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guess what? we DO NOT NEED TO FARM OTHERS. Eat a fucking plant, for christs sake.
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When we humans farm, we impact the surrounding ecosystem. When our farming consists of raising animals that must be fed, the impacts include all those involved with both feeding the farm animals and the wastes those animals produce. Farming concentrates more animals into smaller areas than those areas can sustain, and the more concentrated the farming is, the greater the extent of the damages.
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No! At least not the open pens in the photo that releases toxins, viruses and sea lice that degrade the oceans around them. Landlocked and water purified before release, OK, but NO GMO salmon! Keep that crap out of the food chain.
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INDEED Mr WARD, ONE PARTICULAR CASE IS THE SITUATION IN A GROUP OF ISLANDS OFF THE EQUADOR COAST, WHERE THE SEA BED WAS TOTALLY DESTROYED BY THE CHEMICALS USED TO GROW THE FISH FASTER BY A GERMAN (?) COMPANY, AND WHEN IT STARTED TO “”GO DOWN HILL”” THEY ABANDONED IT, LEAVING THE SEA WITH A GREAT DEAL OF DAMAGE– I AVOID FARMED FISH AT ALL COSTS: FACTORY FISHING SHOULD BE STOPPED AND SILLY QUOTAS SHOULD BE REMOVED,, AS IN THE CASE RECENTLY A FISHING BOAT IN THE ALGARVE HAD A LOT OF SARDINES CONFISCATED, THAT WERE DESTRIOED BECAUSE IT WAS NOT IN THE QUOTA OF THAT BOAT, AND THE CAPTAIN FINNED A HEFTY FINE: V.C.
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Fish farming in the ocean is hazardous for the health of wild fish. http://www.seafoodwatch.org/ocean-issues/aquaculture/pollution-and-disease
Reply Ecosnippets, the wording of this post might affect the credibility of this page, if it ever intended to be neutral or extremely selective about the content shared herein.
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Sorry Bjorn, I can’t see the logic n that thinking. If we wish to pull a certain amount of fish out the sea and we find that’s a diminishing resource, then we need to find a way to farm them. Or give up fish. All the cod and herring which were once in abundance certainly would have produced no more waste than the same number of farmed fish.
Reply We need to consider that the ‘wild catch’ fishery organisations are in the process of fighting for their unsustainable lives, and have very extensive marketing campaigns running to promote their system over farmed systems.
Reply Mark Eastaugh it takes 4kg of small fish, often fished in polluted waters to grow 1kg of salmon. The European health monitors have said that because of dioxin levels in farmed fatty fish, simply eating 185g a week exceeds the safe threshold.
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Mark Eastaugh Yes they would produce the same amount of excrement, however, there would be no excess food in the water and the fish would not be schooling in such tight locality. Nature has a wonderful mechanism for ensuring balance and sustainability of eco-systems. If too many fish were in one area, the food source would diminish, then the preditors would, then the food source would recover… (predator-prey cycle).
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THERE IS ONE ENORMOUS PROBLEM WITH FISH FARMING; THE FISH IS NOT ENTIRALY SAFE TO EAT, BECAUSE OF THE CHEMICALS GIVE TO THEM TO KEEP DESIESES AWAY, AND THE DAMAGE TO THE AREA AFECTED WHERE THE “FARM” IS SITUATED: SEE THE RESULT IN EQUADOR ISLANDS THAT WERE EXPLOITED BY A GERMAN ORGANISATION?. V.C.
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Fish farms are found to be damaging to the wider ecosystem as the large confined populations are a good habitat for parasites and diseases which wild fish can pick up. Also there are regularly accidental releases of large numbers of farmed fish which then contaminate the wild gene pool and transmit pathogens. Plus not good for the welfare of the farmed fish.
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Stop eating animals. Eat the plants that are grown for animal food and we have enough.
Reply Veganism is not sustainable either – it depends where you live.
Not all countries grow feed for animals, in fact many do not. Many use natural pastures and areas of land unsuitable for cultivation in order to rear animals. In these areas eating meat (at a reduced consumption – not every day) is far better than eating nuts, avocados, palm oil or soya which has been grown in tropical climates, often by underpaid labourers, and transported (often by plane for fresh produce) around the world for consumption. Let alone the deforestation which has occurred in many of these producer countries as they seek a way to compete in the world economy and see the increased demand for high fat and protein-based plant products as an easy market.
People should eat what is locally available – for instance in Europe meat, root vegetables, wheat, and legumes were the majority diet before globalization. These are the foods which can be sustainably produced in the region. Eating a diet following these foods means that the overall environmental cost of your food is likely to be lower than if you were vegan eating nuts from South America, Soya from Asia, Bananas from Southern Africa, Avos from Australia etc. Furthermore, by incentivising these countries to export produce puts the local communities and population fo these countries at risk. This is very much the case in some African countries where food exports have driven local prices through the roof that communities which had access to a balanced, and healthy diet are now reduced to only being able to afford imported corn and wheat products as their fresh fruits and vegetables are overpriced to international demand.
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Lloyd Hughes where did you get the data that backs up this? I’m asking as a curious vegan, who have read the opposite, that even eating imported greens is still better (for the environment) than locally produced meat
Reply Just ask Scotland how fish farming is working out for them… The wild sea trout population is diseased, undersized, unable to breed and a once sustainable fishery is in complete ruin since the introduction of salmon farms to the area. Fish farming in the ocean is another terrible idea which people blindly assume to be sustainable but is in fact has the complete opposite effect…
Reply Thanks Lloyd. Why would it not be sustainable? Wild populations are dramatically reduced now, how does substituting them with farmed fish change anything?
Reply You guys need to remember the ‘wild catch’ fishery organisations are in the process of fighting for their unsustainable lives, and have very extensive marketing campaigns running to promote their system over farmed systems.
Reply Mark Eastaugh I’m not arguing against farmed fish, I’m arguing against using the oceans for this purpose. If you look at fish farming it has been done successfully for freshwater species, with a limited effect on the environment. However, there can still be an effect. In one of the natural fisheries my club managed, the e-coli levels in the crystal clear water where dangerously high and this was traced back to an upstream fish farm who were not managing the outflow of their ponds directly. Furthermore, fish sometimes escape these farming operations and have had a hugely negative effect on indigenous species who become prey to a predetory fish that should never have reached their eco-system.
While those cases are freshwater based, and based on my own experience of being involved in the management of recreational fisheries, the situation is far more pronounced in sea based fish farms.
There are 2 main types of ocean based aquaculture. Pods in the ocean, and land based pods.
Land based/isolated pods are a far better solution as the effluent water can be directly processed and pumped back into the ocean. Furthermore, disease outbreak can be contained and treated directly. However these operations are difficult and expensive to setup and manage.
Thus farms prefer using ocean based pods. Firstly the fish species farmed in these pods are migratory fish who usually have a huge territory, these fish are now over stocked and contained within a relatively small pod. Thus the build up of organic matter in these pods is huge, causing breeding grounds for diseases and parasites like sea lice. 5 sea lice on a young wild fish is generally enough to kill it, thus destroying the breeding stock of future generations (this is the case of wild sea trout populations in Scotland) where a fishery which was productive and protected for hundreds of years has been brought to its knees with the introduction of sea based salmon farms in the area. Apart from the increased levels of parasites on farmed fish (usually each carrying a few dozen sea live each) the increased organic matter leads to unhealthy fish which is not totally safe for human consumption due to increased mercury levels. Fish farming suffers many of the same problems as battery chicken farming, except in the case of battery chickens we have control over the surroundings while in Ocean based farming we basically taking the same approach as mines used to, by dumping waste into a river/the ocean and arguing the currents will disperse it.
Reply Mark Eastaugh this is the poorest of arguments and could easily be flipped around to say: we need to remember that aquaculture is much bigger business and drives bigger profits than traditional fisheries and thus they have extensive marketing campaigns and fund environmental organizations to promote their damaging practices in the name of profits.
Reply Mark Eastaugh as a scientist myself, I see the importance of this and will get back to you on it as I will need to find these sources again.
However, it is important to remember a few things when calling for scientific papers. 1) a simple Google will yield papers on any result you wish to prove – just because there are papers it doesn’t mean they are worth anymore than a personal opinion. 2) funding plays a large part in scientific research and honestly as bad as it is, people reformulate their results to tell the story that will ensure they get more funding. 3) negative results in science are highly stigmatized and not accepted in many fields, thus only one side of the coin is shown. Papers which say ‘hey we don’t really know, the data is inconclusive’ very seldom get published.
I’ll find some resources which I have used, and link them here
Reply Based on those resources it is clear that we do not yet have a good enough understanding of the oceanic environment to be able to say fish farming is a viable and safe solution.
However, the findings do highlight numerous dangers, and issues related to fish farming – even though these findings are related to the placement, density and management of farms they head a strong argument against fish farming as the potential negative effects of sea-based farming far outweigh the potential positive effects.
What I haven’t included is the medical research showing the dangers of consumption of farmed/anti-biotic fed fish.
Essentially advocating for fish farming is in the same line as advocating for factory farming of chickens, pigs, cows etc. We are well aware of the negative effects of these on the quality of the produce, as well as on the welfare of the animals involved. We advocate for better farming practices on land, but when it comes to the ocean (which we understand even less about) we are fine to follow the very approach we know doesn’t work on land.
There are only 3 ways in which we can live sustainably on this planet: 1) Reduce the population to the point where communal food systems can be re-initiated and the reliance on industrial food can be decreased, 2) Eat a diet which is regionally feasible so that your reliance on industrial food is reduced, and the overall, full lifecycle of your food has the lowest environmental impact and 3) reduce your consumption of meat and fish, and ensure what you are consuming is from a sustainable and human source.
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While fish farming / aquaculture is a great idea and has been practiced in one way or another for hundreds of years it will not be a blessing without an “real” downsizing of human populations world wide. Increasing this activity increases ocean pollution. Our oceans are already at the point of collapse. We have already seen many fish stocks crash and others are right on the brink of collapse. Homo sapiens are the only animals that defecates in its nest and will be up to Homo sapiens to straighten out their mess and quickly as measured in a couple of decades.
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Fish farming is fraught with pitfalls. I think a better solution is just to fish less. The motivation for farming or catching massive quantities of fish is profit: more fish = more profit. It won’t be easy to downsize, since so many livelihoods depend on it, but over-fishing and the downfalls of farming fish will ultimately be far more damaging to those livelihoods. Consumers are also to blame, since they continue to consume in wilful ignorance of the consequences.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/can-deepwater-aquaculture-avoid-the-pitfalls-of-coastal-fish-farms
More importantly, that to fish less is to fish well.
Much of the damage of ecosystems comes from non-selective fishing methods which cause huge reef damage, large amounts of bycatch (which is often just dumped into the ocean and dies as a consequence of stress). Our current methods of fishing could be likened to going hunting for a deer but shooting everything you see just in case it is a deer.
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We must stop USING the ocean (and nature in general) und start living together!!
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Stop population growth – stop pollution – stop mining – work towards peace – care about each other, animals and our world – try and be a good person —- I know many people who are vegetarian but not particularly nice people
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Why not farm fresh water fish for the table in the vast inland reservoirs we have, or in conjunction with them. Knowing the water output will be filtered and sterilised before being recycled.
A lot less to go wrong in a closed system inland water body than the ocean.
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I will not buy farmed fish, I was put off seeing them in Vietnam. Our food is already of questionable quality unless you have money for organic and the Industry is only about making money. Can you imagine what the fish will be fed to maximise profits?
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They will just be grown in sewage ponds like the talipia, shrimp and catfish are now! Humans cut corners to make money at every turn…until we are all sick or poisoned!
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Dalles Hayes so sorry – typo. We must STOP hunting in the oceans. We are decimating the seas. If you want to eat fish, eat the farmed stuff and sort out the problems.
Reply Jodie Hayes Again I disagree, the farmed stuff is destroying the estuaries which is the nursery for many species of fish. Remove netting and set lines perhaps from hunting of fish.
Reply Turn Sea world into a closed loop aquaponics establishment, that kind of fish farming perhaps. But they need the animal proteins so feeding them farmed insects perhaps. They simply cannot use the natural waterways with their current methods.
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keep the steroids & antibiotics out…no issues….anything other than “natural food aka non-gmo” not acceptable
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As long as the only farm native species. Don’t need a repeat of Asian carp in the Mississippi.
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Please read up on sea lice from fish farms and how it affects wild species. Container farming on land … maybe.
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Because fish farms farm intensively, (1000s of fish kept in small spaces) they contract diseases and then are treated, usually as cheaply as possible, with antibiotics and other such pharmaceutical drugs. Then this contaminated water is just emptied into to the oceans/lakes and kills natural habitats and poisons the environment. Fish farms are causing a huge natural disaster in countries such as Canada and those Nordic countries. Buying cheap fish from big supermarket chains contributes to this environmental disaster. Shop local. buying fish from small independant fisherman, is better than supporting big fisheries by buying shit, cheap, cancer and disease ridden fish from fish farms ?
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Hows come all these so called “green” ideas never mention the harm they cause
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The problem lies with fish being grouped together in a cage, prison, not in their natural environment, and disease is rampant. Copious amounts of antibiotics are used to prevent spread, containment and treatment of infections. This, in turn, affects the local waters and the inhabitants. How about we stop decimating the oceans, rivers and land and look at the bigger picture and be responsible caretakers not only for ourselves but for the future and the creatures who live alongside us. Oh of course not that doesn’t make a fiscal profit. I despair.
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Much more harmful. There are a couple documentaries from around the world that show the effect of fish farms in rivers and oceans. It does not work.
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