Fish Farm this

Some folks honestly believe that fish farms (aka: aquaculture) are, in the parlance of the day, “sustainable.” Which is sort of like saying that backyard, jungle-style, cocaine processing is sustainable. Fish farms may be efficient producers of cheap protein, but they appear about as sustainable as GM’s preferred bonds.

With that introduction, it’s interesting to note that the Obama Administration has “declined to block a plan that opens federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico to large-scale commercial fish farming, despite concerns from some fishing and environmental advocates.”

Jim Balsiger, the acting NOAA wonk for fisheries, added this quaint data into the mix: “Eighty percent of the seafood we eat is imported, and about half of that is farmed…” So if we can’t beat em, let’s join em, eh Jim?

Not to worry, NOAA plans to reply on protective “national guidelines the agency hopes to draw up within months.” Nothing like getting out in front of the ball where the environment is concerned.

What’s a poor shrimp to do? According to that bastion of sustainability, Time Magazine – “To create 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) of high-protein fishmeal, which is fed to farmed fish (along with fish oil, which also comes from other fish), it takes 4.5 kg (10 lbs.) of smaller pelagic, or open-ocean, fish.”

Forgetting the antibiotics, “the destruction of coastal habitats through waste disposal, the introduction of diseases and the possible escape of exotic species that can threaten indigenous breeds,” (Time), most monkeys can do the math here – fish farms are anything but sustainable. That is, if your goal is to actually sustain our planet’s native ecosystems, habitats, indigenous species, and natural processes. But maybe we’re talking about sustaining something else?

Oh – say, can you see? The hacks up yonder in Washington need to get out of their cubicles more often. (Calling all bureaucrats – Nature is anything but abstract data, computer models, or policy papers.)

Perhaps it’s time to rethink sustainability, the most abused word in our nation’s political language. Industrial farming is about inputs, outputs, and efficiency. Just because you move an industrial farm into the deep blue sea doesn’t change the nature of the beast.

Or, as Mr. Byrne once said: “Same as it ever was.”

posted by Mudd