Another Bottom Trawling Article

As a CHINESE, we like our fish freshly caught, but since farmed fish and all the other things we eat are cheaper....we eat all the farmed stuff.

But then again....DOWN WITH BOTTOM TRAWLING!
 
rvangeld said:
Oh, by the way, I am in the School of Aquaculture and we focus on salmon, trout, greenback flounder, seahorses..... There is a big stigma against farmed fish. People will eat beef, lamb and chicken. All high denisity farming, yet as soon as you go to the water, fish should be wild. Go figure! People want their fish freshly caught, yet strangely they don't care how it was caught.

Maybe if the aquaculture industry was

1) more involved with closed containment tanks on land, instead of disease, sewage and parasite spreading net pens in the ocean that destroy native species (eg. farmed Atlantic salmon infecting native Pacific salmon with sea lice)

2) focussed on fish like carp and tilapia that eat a vegetarian diet, instead of trawling up coarse fish in Chile, grinding them to fishmeal, and feeding the fishmeal to farmed Atlantic salmon in BC or Scotland or wherever;

people wouldn't have such a negative view of it??

Just a suggestion....

You can't compare beef, lamb and chicken to farmed salmon. Salmon are carnivores. It is inherently wasteful and ineficient to raise farmed fish on a diet of trawled wild fish.There's not much of a market for ranch-raised tiger, bear, or wolf is there?
 
Number one - just because I am with aquaculture does not mean I endorse its practices.
Number two - okay so we move the fish to land. The land required to support a farm would be huge. So which do we choose to destroy - the land or water environment? You would still get disease, sewage and parasites because of the nature of the beast. I do all my experiemnts on a land based facility and it is not physically possible to have a disease free system. I should know as I work on disease. There will always be sewage and it depends on the country's goverment and their legislation that dicatates if and how the sewage is to be treated. The difference would be if it was moved to land, the sewage would be concentrated into one area.
Number three - yes using other species would be a great idea, except for one thing - there has to be a market for it. One area of research we do here is to look at alternative feeds for salmon and trout like soy, lupin and other plant based feeds.
We are all working here to try and make better practice out of aquaculture. But as long as there are billions of mouths to feed we need aquaculture. Without it the seas would be dead, we would over fish to the point where we have nothing left.
Instead of whinging at the problem, why don't people become part of the solution. Aquaculture is not perfect, not by a long shot. We have farmers that are only interested in profit, governements that don't care about environmental impact and scientists that are trying to make compromises and solutions.
Do you want to eat fish or not?
And yes chicken and cows and pigs are all herbivores. Their food comes from the land which is intensively farmed and stripped of nurtrients, turned over and eroded by hoofed animals. Australia has been in drought for over 10 years. Our once fertile soil has been stripped bare by over farming and lack of water. We destroy the earth in so many ways it is sad. Whether we are on the land or in water we need to respect and nuture our environment.
Its no small issue and I don't think it should be treated as such.
 
Hear, Hear!

A volley of very good points, rvangeld! Right with you, matey!
Aquaculture has had a lot of bad press and more often than not only massive pollution events and outbreaks of diseases make the news.
I persist in thinking that's our way forward (especially when it comes to alleviate pressure on the oceans/deep sea). Let's remember that aquaculture (on a global trade scale) is a new thing, Some people have jumped on it to make some cash and don't give a flying f**k about the damage their "all-for-profit" attitude is going to cause. My knowledge of it is some lochs up in Scotland had to be closed off (as best as one can do that) due to pollution/disease.
We can think of quite a few of other fields that have/had similar problems. Crops and pesticides strong enough to kill the people who spread them. Herds and vast areas trampled. Battery farming and the regular outcry of eco-activists denouncing their cruelty. Profit maximising and the very recent fout-and-mouth.... and the list goes on forever.
On the flip side, there has been a number of improvements with time and research. Vaccines, free-range, more user/eco-friendly pesticides, etc. The "kinks" in nowadays' aquaculture will be ironed out and we'll get there. :cool2:

There is work to be done :biggrin2:

As an aside, there used to be great hopes in integrated systems (especially for Tilapias farming iirc) where the sewage/waste was to be recycled as fertiliser for plants with either a commercial/export value or a place in the target fish's feed. I remember reading about those experiments and (more importantly) about the plans for expansion, return on investment and marketability.... You wouldn't happen to know what's the final word on those projects? Are they still in research phase?

TPOTH
 
I went to a seminar the other day about just this topic. Wastewater aquaculture is used widely in south east asia for carp and talapia. In europe, northern america and australia it seems to be in the experimental stages. There seems to be waves of interest and then funding cuts out. The problem concerning most people seems to be how the general public will percieve fish grown in wastewater. The current test to determine if these fish are fit for public consumption is a test of E. coli. However, many people believe this is not sufficient. What about viruses, fungi and other potential pathogens? There has been little to no research in this area. In Israel, they use waste water aquaculture extensively but only within their country, they do not export. They do not want a 'bad' batch going overseas and ruining their potential export. They are doing more research before they commit to export.
I can tell you that three reaserch bodies are currently looking at in Australia. There is research being done. But as usual it takes time and money, so I don't forsee it being used extensively in the near future.

We just have to keep working at it. :smile:
 
Well, some major international developments are happening, from a company, Sealord (NZ) that has just posted ~ 1 billion revenue.

"Wellington, New Zealand, Rome, Italy and Gland, Switzerland, 6 July 2006, (IUCN) - In a global first, four major fishing companies announced today a voluntary halt on trawling in eleven benthic-protected areas in the southern Indian Ocean. This will protect and conserve the benthic and associated fish fauna and related biodiversity in one of the largest marine protected area enclosures ever." (and more in the link)

"Chief executive Doug McKay said that, for the financial year ending June 30, 2007, Sealord was on track to make $1 billion in revenue. Much of this was due to overseas growth, and a strategy of pursuing joint ventures. "It's helped us build a $500 million business in Europe from pretty much a standing start". Only 25 to 30 per cent of revenue now comes from New Zealand operations." (and more in the link)
 
If it's the orange roughy fishery in the southern Indian Ocean, it was fished out by ~2001.

ref:

Strutt, I. 2001. Fleet Flops on seamounts: mountains of debt from Indian Ocean. Fishing News International 41(1): 1.
 

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