aquaculture

Seaweed Farming Further Considered

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Severine von Tscharner Welcome forages for seaweed in Cobscook Bay, Maine.

Our thanks as always to Food & Environment Reporting Network. In this article by Bridget Huber, with photography by Lauren Owens Lambert, some of our earlier links to stories about farming in the sea are called into question.

A variety of seaweed harvested from the Gulf of Maine, including sugar kelp, sea lettuce, dulse, bladderwrack, and Irish moss.

Climate savior or ‘Monsanto of the sea’

Seaweed farming is being hyped as a major weapon in the fight against climate change. But skeptics say the rush to build industrial-scale operations risks unintended consequences.

Early on a cool spring morning, in far Downeast Maine, Severine von Tscharner Welcome and her husband, Terran, scrambled along a point jutting into Cobscook Bay. The Passamaquoddy people named the bay Kapskuk after the immense tides and wild currents that make the water seem to boil. Continue reading →

When Farming Is Good For Biodiversity

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Mariko Wallen and Louis Godfrey tend to the seaweed on their farm in Placencia, Belize. This farm grows two species: Eucheuma (for consumption) and Gracilaria (used for skin treatments and cosmetics). The farm is part of a program sponsored by TNC to bring seaweed aquaculture to the area in cooperation with the Placencia Fishermen Cooperative.

Thanks to the Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science website for this:

Aquaculture Adds Value to Habitat

Bivalve and seaweed farming systems result in measurable increases in fish and invertebrate abundance and diversity, new research from The Nature Conservancy, University of New England, University of Melbourne, and the University of Adelaide finds. Continue reading →

Salt Pond Farming

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Families in small town, coastal Maine have been fisherfolk for generations, but waters warm and fish patterns change, many are looking at alternative livelihoods. Joe Young, pictured above, is diversifying into oyster and kelp farming in addition to his dockside cafe that where he sells lobster rolls, lobster dinners and, now, his homegrown oysters.

A FISHERMAN TRIES FARMING

COREA, Me. — The boats start up around 3:30 in the morning, stirring the village with the babble of engines before they motor out to sea. They will return hours later, loaded with lobster.

Joe Young’s boat has not gone out lately. Instead, he puts on waders and sloshes into the salt pond behind his house, an inlet where water rushes in and out with the tides. After a lifetime with most of his income tied to what he finds in the sea, this lobsterman — and sixth-generation fisherman — is trying his hand at something new. He is farming oysters. Continue reading →

Farming Fish For The Whole World

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A Russian fish farming operation in Ura Bay in the Barents Sea.
Maxim Zmeyev/AFP/Getty Images

Thanks to Alastair Bland and the folks at the salt at National Public Radio (USA) for this look at the prospects for aquaculture on a global scale:

For years, scientists and activists have sounded the alarm that humans’ appetite for seafood is outpacing what fishermen can sustainably catch.

But new research suggests there is space on the open ocean for farming essentially all the seafood humans can eat. A team of scientists led by Rebecca Gentry, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that widescale aquaculture utilizing much of the ocean’s coastal waters could outproduce the global demand for seafood by a staggering 100 times. Continue reading →

One Possible Future of Fish

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Open-ocean aquaculture could reduce environmental concerns associated with aquaculture in coastal waters. Photo courtesy of NOAA Fisheries.

We’re always looking for well-balanced discussions on innovative but occasionally controversial forms of food production.  Open ocean aquaculture is an example, and we appreciate the Food & Environment Reporting Network for offering just that, suggesting that many of the environmental concerns with aquaculture are mitigated by using deep water locations.

President of the New Orleans–based Gulf Seafood Institute, Harlon Pearce knows better than anyone that wild fisheries alone can’t supply U.S. consumers’ growing demand for fish. Which is why he’s doing his best to bring everyone to the table to achieve one goal: farming the Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading →

What’s Behind the Prawn Sandwich?

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Your cheap prawn sandwich may be destroying Sri Lanka's mangroves. PHOTO: Aldi

Your cheap prawn sandwich may be destroying Sri Lanka’s mangroves. PHOTO: Aldi

A swelling appetite for shrimps and prawns in America, Europe and Japan has fuelled industrial farming of shellfish in the past few decades. The industry now has a farm-gate value of $10 billion per year globally and the prawn in your sandwich is much more likely to have come from a pond than from the sea. While the industry is dominated by the likes of China, Vietnam and Thailand, a large number of other countries have invested heavily in cultivation too.

 One is Sri Lanka, which saw the industry as a passport to strong economic growth and widespread employment. Just outside the world’s top ten producers, it accounts for approximately 50% of the total export earnings from Sri Lankan fisheries. More than 90% of the harvested cultured prawns are exported, going mostly to Japan.

Prawn aquaculture has been likened to slash-and-burn cultivation—find a pristine spot, remove the vegetation and farm it for a few years before moving on. But the analogy is misleadingly benign. Slash-and-burn systems on a small scale can be sustainable, since the cut plots can recover afterwards.

Continue reading →