Bush seeks (200-mile) expansion of offshore fish farms

[Newsjock]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/227623_fishfarms08.html?dpfrom=thead

By ROBERT McCLURE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Calling fish farming a potential boon for consumers and the economy, the Bush administration yesterday proposed to massively expand the practice to waters as far as 200 miles offshore.

Supporters in Washington, including a state senator who advocates for fish farmers, urged Congress to bless the idea. They said a likely result -- if fish-culturing methods can be perfected -- would be a cheap source of ocean-grown delights, such as black cod, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Critics answered that the aquaculture build-up is a get-rich-quick scheme destined to leave taxpayers subsidizing an industry that would pollute the ocean, serve up substandard fish and, ultimately, center its economic activity in Third World nations.

... As this country's wild fish runs have been harvested to excess, federal fisheries authorities increasingly have viewed fish farming as the way out of a difficult dilemma.

more

[whatelseisnew]

1. Another bad move from this short-sighted, greedy admin

"Environmentalists and commercial fishermen say the legislation is too broad and gives the Department of Commerce, the parent agency of the Fisheries Service, total discretion on environmental regulations."

[enough]

2. Sounds like it.

snip>

"Any time you have a confined feedlot operation, you're going to have disease and pathogens and parasites, so you're always medicating for your weakest animal -- whereas in nature, that animal would die and become part of the food chain," said Anne Mosness, a Bellingham-based crusader for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a national research and advocacy group.

"It's the equivalent of having a hog farm in a city park flushing its wastes into the street," she said.

Mosness, who fished for salmon in Alaska for 28 years, worries that producing enough salmon in fish farms will give politicians an excuse to discontinue environmental-protection efforts designed to make Northwest rivers more welcoming to salmon.

snip>

[DeepModem Mom]

3. kick

[NJCher]

4. I heard a story about this on NPR

One of the science shows. By the end, I wanted to :puke:
and never eat fish again.


Cher

[Dora]

5. They're making indigenous fish sick

I read an article recently about wild salmon being infected and killed by parasites introduced to the water environment by farmed salmon. It may have been in Consumer Reports.

People just need to STOP BUYING FISH. Some things just aren't supposed to be cheap. Period. If you want to eat fish - go fishing. We all feel so freaking entitled to (you name it) it makes me sick. You want crab legs? Go catch your own freaking crab.

BOYCOTT RED LOBSTER AND LANDRY'S. /rant

[progressoid]

6. Democrats are missing the boat here

Whether we like it or not, we need to resolve this problem. We are overfishing the entire planet. Fish farming is an obvious solution.

Instead of outright rejecting this plan, we should make sure it is properly environmentally studied and regulated.

I hate this administration as much as anyone but the sad fact is that this is going to happen one way or another. We can either bitch and wring our hands about it or we can act like the party of the environment and make sure it's done right.

[Centered]

8. I agree

Just Bitching and moaning doesn't help anyone... we need to offer solutions and not just say someone elses idea sucks. No one (or party) gets it right all the time but if we don't put our ideas forward no one will have the chance to hear us

People will tune us out if all we do is defy without providing options/solutions.

[Toots]

9. Alaska is having record returns year after year

What this will do is outsource the fifteen thousand Alaska fishing jobs that provide for the hundreds of coastal communities. It is not a good thing. what is a good thing is what alaska has been doing for years. It is called enhancement. Alaska takes three percent right off the top from the fisherman when they sell their fish to re-invest back into the fisheries. They use that money to build and operate hatcheries and to build stuff like fish ladders and re gravel stream beds which have been disrupted through logging and other stuff. In the mid sixties a record harvest of salmon was arround seventy million fish. There has not been a year under a hundred million salmon caught in more than two decades. Now a record catch is closer to four hundred million salmon. There is not a single dam on any major river and Alaksa Fish & Game Biologists say stocks are extremely healthy. Not just healthy but extremely healthy. Stocks of cod and halibut have shown great increases since the introduction of the new management system of IFQs. It is a matter of preserving the environment not making inferior fish stocks. IMHO

[Bigmack]

11. YES! Well said.

I used to eat farmed salmon and steelhead.... until I found out about the antibiotics and chemicals. Any fish that has "color added" is nothing I'm interested in.

I'm a long-time sport salmon fisherman, and I'd rather eat a wild Chum than a farmed King anytime.

The enormous success of the marketing campaign for Copper River salmon, as well as Troll-caught salmon, has shown that people are willing to pay for quality... even if they have to eat less of the quality fish.

I know a guy in Canada that was grandfathered on a troll license there. He's fishing less now, catching fewer fish, but making twice the money. He's contracted his catch to a few medium-sized markets, and labels his catch as "troll caught, wild, and properly cared-for". They'll buy all he catches. He sells a white King that is so ..... (mouth watering noises)

[progressoid]

12. Do you eat beef, chicken, pork, eggs,

or for that matter potatoes? They are all loaded with chemicals and antibiotics. You'll be hard pressed to find any land animal that is raised "naturally".

[Bigmack]

16. Damn little red meat or chicken...

I follow my own advice.. no chemicals or hormones. I don't mind paying more.... I just don't have the money left over to buy all the corporate shit I'm supposed to have.

I've cultivated (pun intended) some amateur/professional truck farmers who practice organic or near organic farming.

We eat organic chicken, "natural" beef and pork. I used to raise my own and fed them "trim" from markets. I know that's not free of residues, but damn near nothing is... as you say. Pasture-raised beef, pork, chicken, and turkeys is about as good as you get these days.

I've cultivated (pun intended) some amateur/professional truck farmers who practice organic or near organic farming.

We are NOT organic freaks, but we are really aware of the poisons around us.

For the be-kind-to-animals folks.... the pasture-raised animals have as good a life as we can give to something we ultimately eat. I used to say that my animals lived in paradise and had only one bad moment in their lives. I don't say that flippantly... I just cannot stand the idea of battery-hen eggs, or confined pork, or feed-lot cattle. They are inhumane as well as unhealthy for the consumer.

[progressoid]

14. Great, lets impliment that in the rest of the Union too.

Because if we're importing 70% of our fish, clearly something needs to be done.

If production is increased in the lower 48 either through enhancement or farms or ???, one would hope that the inpact would be felt on foreign exporters first and not the Alaskan fishing industry.

[noonwitch]

15. Most of the fish I buy comes from Alaska or Canada (not Great Lakes)

I live in Michigan, but we've been warned not to eat too much fish from the Great Lakes because of mercury levels. This is very sad, because throughout my childhood, we'd eat the fish we caught in Lake Michigan for dinner that night.
Mercury is not an issue in fish from Alaskan or northern Canadian waters. Alaskan salmon is very tasty, much tastier than farm-raised.

[hatrack]

It is not a solution - not as currently practiced. It is a shell game.

For species like black cod, tuna, salmon - any carnivorous fish - aquaculture foods must be protein-based.

And where do they get the protein? Simple - they fish down the food chain, stripping the oceans of menhaden, capelin, herring, and probably eventually squid and krill - anything that will provide more protein for the ever-growing number of fish farms.

And even aside from the problems of pollution, parasites, escapes of GMO fish, etc., there's this fundamental dilemma. It takes between three and five pounds of wild-caught protein to produce every pound of farmed salmon or tuna. As someone once pointed out, farming salmon for meat is like farming tigers for meat.

If the NOAA plans are implemented, it would mean a five-fold demand for wild-caught protein, and likely the complete stripping of the oceans of all low- to mid-chain species.

As we speak, every commercial fishery in the world is either commercially extinct or fully exploited - i.e. at its harvest limits. Intensifying this pressure by a massive expansion of aquaculture would simply speed up the end game.

But hey, there'd be at least a few quarters of brisk profit growth for the aquaculture industry, and for a while we'd be able to git us all kindsa cheap fish down at Wal-Mart, so I guess we have no other choice but to follow through. :eyes:

[progressoid]

13. Same problem with pork and beef.

If you want to feed protein to the population, its more efficient and ecologically sound to eat the beans and corn rather than run them through a cow or pig first. Somehow I don't see America giving up on bacon cheese burgers in the near future.

[leesa]

7. This might be interesting in the sense that the Rev Moon owns

about a third of our fishing industry, if I recall correctly. Wonder what his cut is?

[Roland99]

10. 'Living Dangerously' - Lou Dobbs - CNN - tonight at 6pm

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/

The world's oceans are more polluted than ever. We'll tell you what's making the people and fish swimming in them sick.

Plus, biochemist Daniel Baden explains why U.S. coastal waters are toxic.

And, medical attorney Madeleine Pelner Cosman tells us why she says illegal aliens are bringing dangerous diseases to the United States.

[sweetheart]

17. It is a huge mistake, an environmental disaster

It has been an expensive white elephant for scotland that still has
open ended problems, very serious ones at that:

http://www.salmonfarmmonitor.org/farmnewsmay2005.shtml
http://www.mindfully.org/Water/Salmon-Farming-Toxic.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1022_021022_seatroutfish.html
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2465/is_5_31/ai_76285487

As much as it might appear to be a solution to overfishing, you ought
to visit a salmon fish farm and see the "biohazard" signs around the
shoreline warning off people due to dangerous toxins. It figures
that bush would be for it... so he can put some money in the pockets
of "big fishing", but the reality is that the public will be
cleaning up the mess long after bush and his henchmen have been
convicted and executed.

[AuntiBush]

18. Maybe he could sell the ranch and move to this farm.

200 miles just isn't far enough though.

Here's betting his clan already has their greedy little fingers in the pond's future.