Saving Seafood

For the first time ever, we’re farming more seafood than we’re catching: FAO

July 9, 2024 — For the first time in history, we now farm more seafood than we catch from the wild. At the same time, overfishing of wild fish stocks continues to increase even as the number of sustainably fished stocks declines.

That’s according to the  U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) latest “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” (SOFIA) report. The 2024 instalment of the report, a biennial collection of data that outlines the FAO’s vision for the fishing and aquaculture sectors, was released June 8 at a high-level ocean stakeholder event in Costa Rica. It tempers aquaculture progress with a warning that fisheries management is failing to adequately support sustainable wild fish stocks.

The report summarizes the FAO’s “Blue Transformation road map” and encourages countries to implement it. In 2021, the FAO launched the road map, a strategy for meeting the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14), Life Below Water, by 2030, to improve the social, economic and environmental sustainability of aquatic food and feed more people more equitably. Sustainably growing aquaculture and better managing fisheries are central to the Blue Transformation road map, but progress is “either moving much too slowly or has regressed,” the report says.

“The FAO’s ambition for a Blue Transformation is necessary, admirable and ambitious,” Bryce Stewart, a senior research fellow at the U.K.-based Marine Biological Association, told Mongabay. “It appears to have resulted in improved data and a higher profile for blue foods from fisheries and aquaculture as a key way to addressing global issues around inadequate nutrition and inequality.”

Read the full article at Mongabay

First-Ever Federal Rules for Offshore Fish Farming Issued

January 11, 2016 — The first-ever federal regulations for large-scale fish farming in the ocean were issued Monday, opening a new frontier in the harvesting of popular seafood species such as red drum, tuna and red snapper.

The new rules allow the farming of fish in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The rules — in the making for years — were announced in New Orleans by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said the Gulf rules could spur similar rules in other U.S. waters. She said it was time for the United States to open up this new market, which she said could help the U.S. meet its seafood demands.

Fish farming is contentious, with fishermen and environmentalists warning it could harm the marine environment and put fishermen out of work.

Typically, offshore farming is done by breeding fish in large semi-submersible pens moored to the seafloor. The practice is common in many parts of the world, and Sullivan said the United States has fallen behind. About 90 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported and more than half of that is farmed, she noted.

She said expanding fish farming has numerous benefits.

“It’s good for the balance of trade, it’s good for the food security of the country,” she said. She said it could create jobs, too.

The new rules allow up to 20 fish farms to open in the Gulf and produce 64 million pounds of fish a year. The farms can start applying for 10-year permits starting in February, she said.

Read the full story at ABC News

Scientists Say Feeding Fish Soy, Not Fish, More Sustainable

Editor’s Note: One key aquaculture issue not addressed by the article is the importance of marine ingredients in ensuring that farmed seafood diets contain enough omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients. Marine ingredients like fish meal and fish oil are currently the best way of transferring these nutrients to farmed fish and on to consumers. To learn more about aquaculture and marine ingredients, view this video.

November 22, 2015 — SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Research supported by the soybean industry is looking to convert some farm-raised fish into vegetarians.

A South Dakota State University fisheries scientist is developing a soy protein feed that’s tasty and easily digestible to eventually reduce the industry’s need for using wild-caught fish as food for farm-raised fish.

Much of the tilapia, Atlantic salmon and catfish that Americans toss into their shopping carts are raised in fish farms, where companies traditionally feed them pellets containing anchovy, menhaden and herring. The harvest of those small species has pretty much flat-lined, SDSU professor Mike Brown said, and humans’ increased demand for fish has driven up the cost of creating the pellet feed.

“We’ve fully exploited that resource,” he said, noting that the goal is to create a more sustainable – and cheaper – food source. Traditional fish feed is currently costing between $1,450 and $2,000 per ton, while soybean meal runs about $425 per ton, Brown said.

But some environmentalists worry that feeding fish species an uncommon food source could produce excess waste that muddies up inland tanks or offshore waters where fish are raised.

Read the full story at the New York Times

EU looks into reports of fake fish labeling in Brussels

November 3, 2015 — BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union is looking into reports that cheap seafood is often mislabeled as choice fish in some of the Belgian capital’s fine restaurants and even in EU cafeterias.

The Oceana environmental group said Tuesday it found that 31.8 percent of seafood it tested in and around EU institutions in Brussels was a different fish than what was labeled on the menu. In the cafeterias of the EU, which sets fishery policies for the 28-nation bloc, the total amount of falsely labeled fish stood at 38 percent.

“We take this very seriously,” EU spokesman Alexander Winterstein said of the report.

Oceana said 95 percent of what was labeled Bluefin tuna – a fatty, sublime sushi favorite – was actually a less expensive species, served to make a hefty profit. In 13 percent of the cases, cod was also mislabeled and people sometimes were fed pangasius instead, a freshwater fish farmed in southeast Asia.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Jersey Herald

 

Maine Is Literally Dropping Fish Out of Low-Flying Airplanes, and It’s Mesmerizing

October 21, 2015 — Video of a man “aerial dropping” live fish into a pond from a low-flying plane has become a minor sensation after the footage was uploaded to the Facebook page of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The video has so far gotten more than 25,000 views.

“The department annually stocks over 1 million fish throughout the state, utilizing a variety of methods that include flying fish by airplane into remote ponds,” the department wrote in the video description. “The fish are loaded into tanks that are attached to the pontoons on the aircraft, stocking locations are verified and then the planes take off. The tanks are then emptied when flying over the water. The department generally stocks over 180 waters each year by airplane.”

Read the full story at News.Mic