Aquaculture offers many advantages over all traditional fisheries the foremost being the ability to provide fresh, consistent supply of fish year-round. Traditional fisheries rely on the seasonality of fish movements, breeding cycles, and weather conditions to determine when fish are caught. Consumers, through grocery stores and restaurants, have a year round demand for seafood. This is best met by a source that can supply fish year-round. The Alaskan salmon industry is a great example of a seasonal fishery that cannot supply fresh fish at all times of the year. To meet demand, fillets are initially frozen and later thawed and sold, or salmon is sent directly to a cannery and sold as a less desirable/valuable product. Year-to-year changes in harvests pose a similar challenge for many fisheries. Weather conditions, predator-prey relationships, and past fishing pressure all determine whether a particular fishing season will be a good one or bad one. As a result, the supply differs year to year and thus the price of fish varies based on whims of Mother Nature. Price inconsistencies discourage consumers from choosing fish over other sources of protein since its availability and price is ever-changing. In addition, fishing fleets often sit idle for a good part of the year, waiting for the fishing season to open, and when it does, there is no guarantee that there will be enough fish that year to sustain their business and pay their employee’s wages. In bad years the government sometimes has to step in with subsidies to prop up the industry for another season. Aquaculture is not beholden to many of these pitfalls since a well-managed farm can ensure a steady supply of market ready fish.

Overfishing is also a growing concern in nearly all the world’s fisheries. As demand continues to outstrip supply, prices increase and the pressure on an already dangerously low fish population is heightened. Government employed fishery managers are responsible for walking a tight rope between allowing fisherman to harvest enough fish to keep the industry alive, while leaving enough fish behind to allow for a sustainable harvest in the years to come. In order to accomplish this, fishery managers rely on complicated sets of rules and regulations to create artificial barriers to easily catching fish. Rules range from time limits, gear restrictions, to harvest quotas. All of these rules require enforcement and they change from species to species, country to country and year to year. These rules only apply where countries have jurisdiction, typically in their economic exclusive zones (EEZ), which reach 200 miles offshore. Beyond those limits, in the high seas, fishermen face fewer rules and less scrutiny. International treaties and agreements attempt to manage the fisheries beyond individual government jurisdictions, but enforcement is difficult and overfishing can still occur. The collapsing Pacific and Atlantic Bluefin tuna fisheries are good examples of the difficulty of managing the stock of a species that roams between dozens of countries.

A final issue with traditional fisheries is their distance from potential markets. Many fish are caught in remote areas off the coasts of countries that can be thousands of miles away from the final consumer. Aquaculture products can be grown inside cities or at the very least within a reasonable distance to a daily delivery route. The advantages of aquaculture make it an attractive business opportunity, and by consuming aquaculture fish protein we can decrease our environmental footprint while improving our health.

Drawbacks

Although the purpose of this essay is to serve as a booster for fish farming it be would disingenuous to not address the disadvantages of aquaculture. It is possible for technological advancements to solve many of these problems, along with government and consumer oversight to limit destructive practices. First let’s address fish poop; the flushing and removal of fecal matter from the same water that a fish also uses to breathe is a major challenge for all forms of aquaculture. In the ocean this fecal matter can naturally build up on the ocean floor. Similarly, in pond or raceway systems fecal matter is flushed into natural bodies of water. Often times this pollution is not treated in anyway but is instead diluted into a large body of water where its concentration eventually becomes negligible. This is not a sustainable solution and the good news is we can limit fecal pollution with settling ponds, screens, or by regularly moving the farm sites. When captured the feces can serve as a great fertilizer for crops. And in the ocean, benthic habitat can recover in 12 months, a lot faster than a forest or grassland would if disturbed.

Another concern is the possibility of farmed fish escaping from farms and entering the oceans. This is a big problem if farmers are careless and it can lead to the proliferation of invasive species or new diseases. The only way to limit these problems is through regulation and the personal accountability of farmers. One solution is the use of closed-containment land-based systems; which will be discussed further in this essay, these systems make escape or disease movement nearly impossible.

Another major concern is the use of antibiotics to improve fish health. Antibiotic use is now strictly controlled now in most of the developed world, and a good farmer does not need to use antibiotics to control diseases. The developing world still needs to address how they can curtail antibiotic use.

One of the major drawbacks of feeding fish in farms is that wild fish is an important component in nearly all aquaculture feeds, it is most similar to what a fish would eat in the wild and it provides crucial fatty acids and amino acids. The fish that is often used for this is anchovies or other non-food fish and/or fish trimmings. New fish feed formulations limit the amount of wild fish, since it is expensive and its inclusion is not sustainable as the industry grows. Most farms now produce 1 lb. of fish for every 1 lb. of feed, this is known as the feed conversion ration (FCR). One advantage of this practice is that non-palatable wild fish is converted into marketable farmed fish products.

Finally, farming fish leads to the erosion of the traditional fishing industry. Fisherman have to compete with fish farmers for market share, and in many places the costs of catching fish is no longer justified by the price for which it can be sold. This loss of income can be devastating to some coastal communities, but it is unfortunately the cost of technological development and a changing world. Government programs are now available in some Canadian and Northeastern US towns that retrain fisherman to become shellfish farmers. This is a step in the right direction. Together all of the drawbacks can make aquaculture seem like a bad deal, but the advantages to the environment and to consumers outweigh these costs.

Challenges

Despite the advantages of aquaculture, there are a few of challenges that first need to be addressed before we can ramp up production and end our dependence on wild fish. In developed countries, government regulations create an extremely high barrier to entry. This is particularly true in the United States, where lawmakers have not taken the initiative to streamline the cumbersome environmental review processes. In order to build a farm off the coast of many areas of the United States, a farm must first receive approval from nearly 40 organizations and agencies, any one of whom could derail the project indefinitely. There are multiple agencies at each level of government, local, state, and federal, creating a bureaucratic challenge for new farming entrepreneurs. Navigating this process can take millions of dollars and multiple years. As a result, only a couple of businesses are currently trying to launch offshore aquaculture projects in the United States. Permitting on-land farms can be comparably difficult. Obtaining the proper waste discharge and fish-handling permits takes time and money. Certainly, all new operations should perform their environmental due diligence and the government needs to provide proper oversight, enforcing laws and regulations. However, a faster decision making process, and the inclusion of knowledgeable individuals to guide farmers through the process would go along way towards getting more farms off the ground. Currently the lack of knowledge around aquaculture among regulators seems to slow new projects to a stop, no one person is willing to take the responsibility for green lighting a prospective project and therefore nothing moves forward. In some cases it seems regulators have tried to delay the approval process for so long that the applicant simply gives up in despair, preventing the government from having to shoulder any responsibility in making a definitive decision to permit a new farm. Individuals inside and outside of the government need to take responsibility; there needs to be a call to action to make the permitting process much easier, this challenge is technically very easy to overcome with political willpower.