NEW ORLEANS, La. — February 25, 2016 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) decision to approve industrial offshore fish farming last month in federally protected waters in the Gulf of Mexico is a strong concern in a “delicate and restricted estuarine system,” according to a leading non-profit fisherman’s organization.
Eric Brazer, deputy director at the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, told the Louisiana Record that there are strong concerns with constructing an aquaculture facility of unprecedented size.
“We’ve already seen the catastrophic damage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in this sensitive ecosystem,” Brazer said. “It will likely take generations to understand the true ecological and economic cost, the latter of which is already on the order of billions of dollars.”
Finalized in January, the plan for the aqua farms will permit up to 20 industrial facilities, which will see approximately 64 million pounds of fish produced every year in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the same amount of wild fish currently caught in the Gulf of Mexico annually, meaning that farmed fish would double offerings and flood the market.
Brazer said that it will be future generations who suffer as a result.
“It is our commercial fishing and charter businesses in the Gulf of Mexico, and those of the next generation, that will be the ones carrying the entire burden of risk that comes out of this new aquaculture industry,” he said.
A suit was filed against NOAA by a number of Gulf fishing groups, including Brazer’s organization, in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Louisiana on Feb. 12. The suit alleges that NOAA has no authority to undertake the offshore fish farming, and that allowing aqua farms is a threat to native and endangered species, the ecosystem, and the fish we eat.