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Gulf No Place For Fish Farms

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2009

Next week the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is scheduled to take final action on a plan to allow open-water aquaculture in the gulf. The federal regulatory agency, historically dominated by commercial fishing interests, is playing Russian roulette with our coastal fisheries.

Open-water aquaculture, where fish are raised in large pens or nets, has proved devastating in other countries.

The Pew Oceans Commission task force on marine aquaculture identifies potential impacts as "pollution in the form of uneaten food, fish waste and therapeutic drugs and chemicals affecting water quality around and below aquaculture facilities; escape of farmed organisms and their interactions with marine wildlife; disease and parasite transfer to wild populations, and death or injury of marine mammals, seabirds and other wildlife from entanglement in or other contact with aquaculture facilities."

And the threat to water quality is serious.

A Pew Commission report found a 200,000-fish farm produces fecal waste equivalent to the raw sewage from 65,000 people, and the pollution spreads 500 feet beyond each site. Another study found more than half of the total nitrogen and phosphorus fed to fish in commercial farms was released into the surrounding environment.

In the countries that have allowed the offshore farms, the practice has indeed introduced nonnative species, spread viruses and polluted surrounding water.

A virus epidemic in Chile not only wiped out millions of pen-raised salmon but devastated wild fish as well.

An analysis of escaped fish at aquaculture operations by the Pure Salmon Campaign found that between 2000 and 2006, at least 10.2 million farmed salmon and trout escaped from open net cages.

The research also documented the practice increased the risk of disease. One study linked salmon farms with sea lice infestations in native, wild salmon populations.

And if wild fish are used to feed the farmed fish, then food fish critical to wild populations could be threatened.

The council downplays the threats to the gulf - and to the tourism industry it supports - and seems intent on going ahead with the scheme.

It is doubtful the agency has the authority to permit the practice, since it is charged with developing fishing limits, not overseeing farming practices. As John Ogden, director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography, says, open-water aquaculture is "a major industry, akin to factory farming on land." It is not fishing.

And the proposal is not in the interest of commercial fishermen, since it would drive down the prices of wild fish and force them to catch even more to compete with the farm fish.

In any event, the council should not be hurtling ahead with a plan that could prove catastrophic to the Gulf of Mexico, its natural fisheries and the tourism industry it helps to support. If it does, Congress should step in and adopt safeguards for the gulf and the rest of the nation's coastal waters.

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