February 8, 2016 — The Gulf of Mexico is now open for commercial fish farming.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that, for the first time in the U.S., companies can apply to set up fish farms in federal waters.
The idea is to compete with hard-to-regulate foreign imports. But opening the Gulf to aquaculture won’t be cheap, and it could pose environmental problems.
Harlon Pearce, the owner of Harlon’s Louisiana Fish, which supplies restaurants and groceries across the South, says he welcomes the change. Around this time of year, his refrigerated warehouse outside New Orleans is stocked with catch.
“You’ve got 30,000 pounds of fish right here, or more,” he says.
He’s freezing a lot of it to keep up with year-round demand. He says he’d like to sell nationwide, to big chains like Red Lobster, but “we never have enough fish to supply the markets. Never,” he says.
Pearce, who is on the board of the Gulf Seafood Institute, says aquaculture could solve that.
The rest of the world is already heavily invested in farming fish. According to NOAA, 90 percent of fish in the U.S. comes from abroad and half of this is farmed. While fish farms exist in the U.S., the industry has yet to really take off. And, until now, federal waters had been off limits. The U.S. government says that opening up the Gulf to fish farms would reduce American dependence on foreign food and improve security.