Future Oceans
The Future of Sustainable Fish Farming
BY JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU AND JACLYN MANDOSKE Holly Lohuis, Jean-Michel
Cousteau at Marine Harvest in British Columbia, where they filmed the salmon farming operation
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n a world of rapidly evolving technological advancements, there’s one industry that deserves its fair share of attention: sustainable aquaculture. As human populations continue to rise, the need for increased food production stands a foremost concern for sustaining our future’s growing appetite. Like our ancestors before us, people are turning to the sea for the solution. It’s a relationship that goes back for centuries, mankind and the sea. For years, humans have harvested food from the ocean, providing us with the rich and essential nutrients we need. Yet in recent decades, humankind has witnessed the decline of numerous ocean species, animals we once believed to be so abundant we couldn’t possibly alter their populations, let alone drive them to extinction. But that’s exactly what we’re doing – or more precisely, that’s the direction we’re headed. Experts say that over half the world’s wild caught fisheries are fully exploited, meaning that fish are being caught at the maximum rate simply to keep the population stable. Even more, over thirty percent of fisheries are overexploited, meaning that fish are being caught at a faster rate than they can reproduce, leading to the demise of the population and potentially the demise of the species itself.
Environmental Risks
So it seems the solution to the looming food crisis lies not, then, in the ocean itself, but in reaping the oceans benefits through something humans have been doing for quite some time, farming.
Aquaculture, otherwise known as ‘fish farming’, has been on the rise over the past few decades to meet the soaring demand for seafood. Farmed marine species currently constitute over half the seafood consumed worldwide, a number likely to increase as human populations continue to boom at a rate of over 100 million people per year. While farming fish and
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other marine species offer an alternative to overfishing wild populations, it’s not a perfect system and many aspects of aquaculture need increased scientific knowledge and technological advancement to become a viable source of food production in the coming years. Current aquaculture methods are rife with environmental risks. The most common type of aquaculture is mariculture, the cultivation of marine organisms in the ocean or within an enclosed section of the ocean. This includes open-net pens and cages that place farmed fish in direct contact with natural coastal environments. As with many types of farmed animals, aquaculture faces challenges such as disease outbreak, feed production and waste removal. However, by farming in an open system, the challenges go beyond the farmed animals themselves and often pose enormous risks to the surrounding environment. Infectious diseases among farmed fish can spread not only among cultured animals, but also can spread to native populations, introducing non-native diseases into the environment or facilitating disease through unsanitary conditions in densely packed farmed fish. Furthermore, non-native or genetically modified fish can escape pens and potentially outcompete native species, threatening local fish populations in that area.
Another major issue in farming fish sustainability involves the use of their feed. The most common fishes
Photos by: Carrie Vonderhaar
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