Aquaculture

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Aquaculture

• Raising aquatic organisms in controlled
  environments for food
• Fastest-growing form of food production
• 6.9 million tons in 1984
• 33.3 million tons in 1999
• One-third of worlds fish for human consumption
• gt220 Species are farmed
• Shellfish
• Shrimp, Oysters, Mussels
• Finfish
• Carp, Tilapia, Salmon

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Forms of Aquaculture

• Inland Ponds
• Substantial habitat alteration
• Easy to manage waste
• Coastal Net Cages
• Less habitat alteration
• Difficult to manage waste

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Inland Ponds
Ecuadorian Shrimp Farms
Pro -Easy to manage Con -Substantial habitat
alteration
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Net Cages
British Columbia Salmon Farm
Pro -Less habitat alteration Con -Difficult
to manage
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History of B.C. Salmon Farming

• 1970s Small operations bought by multinational
  corporations
• 1980s Fishermen, Tribes and Environmentalists
  oppose salmon farming
• 1995 B.C. imposes moratorium
• 2004 Farmed salmon found to have higher PCB than
  wild salmon

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Columbia River Chinook (millions of kg) (from
Beiningen, KT. 1976. Oregon D.F. W.)
Why farm salmon?
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State of Pacific Northwest Salmon Runs
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Thirty-six PNW salmon runs listed under E.S.A.

• Causes
• Destruction of spawning habitat
• Logging
• Dams
• No access to spawning habitat
• Overfishing
• Reduces returning salmon

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Salmon Farming Problems

• Contamination
• Increases disease
• Produces lots of waste
• Ecologically inefficient
• 5 kg wild fish 1 kg farmed salmon
• Escaped farmed fish affect wild stocks
• Spread disease
• Reduce viability
• Farmed fish are more polluted than wild (Science
  Jan. 2004)
• Biomagnification of pollutants

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Science January 9, 2004

• differences between the farmed and wild salmon
  contaminant concentrations are most likely a
  function of their diet.
• (Hites et al., 2004)

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Is aquaculture bad?

• Noif done ecologically
• Scale is important
• Small Scale More Environmental
• Herbivores better than carnivores
• Herbivores are more efficient
• Filter feeders actually clean the water
• Integrates with other agriculture
• Chinese Integrated aquaculture

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Benefits of Aquaculture

• Improves food security
• Reliable protein source
• 30 of world is malnourished
• Can be very energy efficient
• 10x more fish per unit area than ocean
• Reduces pressure on wild fish
• 70 of edible ocean fish are declining
• Reduces by-catch

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What you can do

• Support with your
• Buy
• Well managed, wild-caught salmon
• Copper River Salmon is good
• Farmed herbivorous Fish
• Farmed filter feeders
• Dont Buy
• Farmed salmon
• Farmed shrimp
• Resources
• www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp