Killer Fish by Brian Clement

Author:Brian Clement
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Publishing Company
Published: 2012-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Aquaculture Creates More Problems Than Solutions

Tens of thousands of aquaculture farms now exist worldwide. These fish farms raise more than 220 species of finfish (most commonly carp and salmon) and shellfish (most commonly clams and mussels).4 Aquaculture now supplies half of the total fish and shellfish for human consumption.5 However, this statistic does not mean that wild fish are off the hook.

“Aquaculture is a contributing factor to the collapse of fisheries stocks worldwide,” determined the ten coauthors of a study that was published in a June 2000 edition of the journal Nature. “For some types of aquaculture activity, including shrimp and salmon farming, potential damage to ocean and coastal resources through habitat destruction, waste disposal, exotic species and pathogen invasions, and large fish meal and fish oil requirements may further deplete wild fisheries stocks.”6

This strong statement underscores the paradox—aquaculture was developed as a solution, but the practice has negatively affected wild fish populations and ocean health. Here’s why: Farmed fish are fed a diet of fish oil and fish meal, which is manufactured from fish waste products and smaller fish (called forage fish) that are caught in the wild. This further depletes the wild fish population at a time when 75 percent of the world’s monitored fisheries are already near or exceeding maximum sustainable yields.7 These facts disprove a common misconception among fish consumers: they are not protecting wild fish when they choose farmed fish. (See chapter 6 to learn why farmed fish are not a safer, more healthful choice in the human diet.)

The authors of a study published in a September 2009 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that fully one-third of the global wild fish catch goes to produce fish meal and fish oil for use in the fish-farming industry and for other agricultural purposes.8 Nearly 60 percent of the fish meal produced in the world is used in Asia, mostly in China. These rising demands for wild fish to feed farmed fish “places direct pressure on fisheries resources,” observed the authors of the Nature article.9

According to the World Review of Fisheries and Aquaculture 2008, more than half of the fish oil produced in the entire world is fed to farmed salmon.10 As discussed in chapter 5, even the most health-conscious consumers don’t realize that marine algae is the original source of omega-3 fatty acids. That’s why herring and sardines, and other forage fish that eat algae and fish oil, are fed to farmed salmon.

The loss of wild fish populations cannot be attributed only to the practice of feeding wild fish, fish meal, and fish oil to farmed fish. An article in the November 2001 issue of EMBO Reports, the journal of the European Molecular Biology Organization, stated: “Most of the ocean fishing catch is simply discarded. . . . When analyzing a five-year survey of trawling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, it was found that only 16 percent of the total catch was commercially viable shrimp, while 68 percent of the total catch was unintended bycatch, mostly juvenile finfish.

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