Is fish farming a sustainable practice?

Young's Seafood have issued a statement giving the thumbs up to fish farming as a sustainable means of producing quality protein http://www.fishupdate.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/14689.

What they do not say is that it takes 4.kgs of seafish such as anchovies and sardines to create 1.kg of farmed salmon. Much the same ratio applies to the conversion rate of protein on tiger prawn farms in Asia. Remember that when you hit the local chinese take away tonight.

Why not just eat the sardines you would be doing the environment and the native fishermen of countries such as Senegal and Chile a big favour.

http://www.anirishanglersworld.com

i much prefer to eat fresh irish prawns. i find imported frozen ones tastless.and the same goes for forced fed anything.

It is beyond my understanding why the so called 'discharge' resulting from quota management plans etc. cannot be used to produce high protein feeds for sustainable fish farming? Rather than dumping the 'bycatch' over board only to be left to rotting on the seabed? Food for thought

That is an interesting thought regarding bye catch. However, I just cannot get my head around catching fish to make feed or fertilizer. By all means use the guts and carcasses after processing but not the whole fish, what a waste!

Why not use vegetable proteins or as I recently observed in Wales protein derived from farmed ragworms, which are fed on protein pellets manufactured from the self same ragworms. Slightly dearer but, only slightly.

That is an interesting thought regarding bye catch. However, I just cannot get my head around catching fish to make feed or fertilizer. By all means use the guts and carcasses after processing but not the whole fish, what a waste!

Why not use vegetable proteins or as I recently observed in Wales protein derived from farmed ragworms, which are fed on protein pellets manufactured from the self same ragworms. Slightly dearer but, only slightly.

I'm fully with you on that Ashley, it makes my heart bleed to think about the waste of perfectly healthy fish, the loss of life and the waste is inexcusable to say the least. This is where my idea comes from, regardless of laws and quota regulations, there must be a way around to utilise these otherwise wasted precious resources in this day and age!
Unfortunately the use of vegetable proteins as food for fish only applies to a limited amount of species only and it always raises the other question of sustainability (fertilisers, pesticides etc.) which are mainly based on petro chemicals or unsustainable resources, even without venturing into the issues or details of doubtful land acquisition practises from certain global players.

There are more sustainable forms of fish farming eg. fish farmed to the organic standard. Personally though, I'd rather eat wild caught fish anytime and preferably fish caught myself rather than commercially.

I suggest reading Charles Clovers book: The end of the line: How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat published in 2005.
Even as an angler and fish consumer it makes me think twice. Using edible fish for cattle feed or fish-farming ?? It's this very practice that is robbing the seas. Together with the fact that 50 % of the fish in your own town and mine is illegal and from the black market in every European country. Gouvernments giving large amounts of money to help fisherman,they buying better sonars to kill of the last tuna in the oceans,fleets of ships robbing the African coasts blind(the biggest factoryship is from Achill) so called withdrawn from European waters makes you think to say the least.They have a license you say,where is their marines to check their catches and nets.... We are staring at the last 10 % of the fishstocks worldwide.That bad ? Even worse ! Keep a few fish to eat,let the rest go undamaged.I know angling is expensive,but no reason to kill anything in sight to fill the freezer or feed our chickenWe like to sell angling as a sport remember ? So ,as always ,let the sport be the example,so we can enjoy it and our children may enjoy it too.Fish farming should be banned right this minute,bass stocks should only be fished for by rod.No commercial fishing for ten years especially with so called chambers of death and bottomnets.You think this will happen ? No !When the last fish is on our tables we realize that we can't eat money...

Piscator.

There are more sustainable forms of fish farming eg. fish farmed to the organic standard. Personally though, I'd rather eat wild caught fish anytime and preferably fish caught myself rather than commercially.

Totally Agree. Haven't eaten Farmed salmon for years, and hopefully I never will for the above reasons. If every angler were to do the same and pass the message onto friends and Family, it would hopefully make a huge impact.

Kev

Sustainable fish is an oxymoron...
The only sustainable environment for fish is its natural environment...
We just gotta catch less!

NO ITS A MARINE TRAVESTY. A buckin disgrace. See the word sustainable on any product and just think one thing, thats a lie.

But sure it keeps people spending money, keeps them happy and gives them a great feeling of satisfaction and peace of mind on their drive from Sainsburys to the gym.

The absence of white trout in our wee river since the salmon farm appeared out in the bay in the early 90's isnt ever going to upset their conscience or annoy them while on the treadmill. Wouldnt want them worrying about grim stuff like that when trying to decide whether to buy a nice merlot or shiraz on the way back to the flat. Heaven forbid they ever had to see a white trout with no skin left supporting a population of 117 juvenile salmon lice and 34 adults.

yes i agree with you on the scarcity of the great white trout. but its not just salmon farming that is the cause of its demise.the amount of pollutants in our streams and rivers is doing most of the damage.also trawlers sweeping there nets around the mouth of the rivers at dawn.i have witnessed this many times in wexford.taken thousands of fish getting ready to go up the river to spawn.this has to have a huge affect on the population of this beautiful fish.its been 2 years since iv caught one .but did also notice the amount of sealice on them was larger than i had seen before.

Hi twinkle, the rivers around me are as clean as you get in Ireland, supporting kingfishers, dippers and otters aplenty. There is no industrial pollution here, unlike the poor sods in the Lough Neagh catchment where fish kills are an annual event. There is neither any intensive agriculture, not ebven dairy farming, just sheep and bullocks, thats it. These rivers are pristine but the white trout no's are about a 20th of what they were in the early 90's prior to the salmon farming here in Red Bay. I am not saying there might not be other factors but I dont know what they are. There is no illegal fishing here with trawler for white trout or any other species for that matter within miles of any of the local rivers, there are no cod left, there is nothing here to trawl for, this bay was full of good cod but the plummet in those happened in the 90's also, thats a different matter.

I have a photo of a white trout I caught in late summer 2010 with a nice mask of sea lice I'll put up later.

for most of my childhood i seen these fish in shoals of sometimes 30 coming up the river to spawn[the shoals got smaller every year]it was a exciting time as a child to see fish so fast zoom past you in the water quicker than you could run.they would be seen in the waves as the sun would come up leaping out of the water. and then enter the river and stop at a group of rocks to clean off the lice the flats in the river would then eat the lice.after a fishkill in the late seventies this river which also was the spawning ground for salmon and flounders was wiped out. we saw no flats in the river for years and the seatrout was a rare sight .im glad to say there has been a little sign of improvment with a few fish showing up in the river last summer but not a patch on what it used to be .therè was also a large population of eels small and large they never came back or at least not visable like they were

Heres this wee fella, nowhere near as bad as the one I referred to above, this one was healthy enough and though heavily infested about the head you couldnt definitively say that this was an unnatural, albeit a nasty load of lice. The other boy, the photos of which arent digital and will have to be scanned for sharing here, (the one with 150 odd lice on it)that was a different story. It was one of many fish encountered over the years, after the introduction of the fish cages which had loads of lice the like of which no one had ever witnessed before, emaciated fish with large areas of skin missing which only just just made it to the river before dying from their injuries as a result of lice infestation. How many fish died in the sea before running the river out of sight and out of mind? If the lice were killing the adult fish they were eating the smolts alive in the late spring.

One thing that did make me wonder about this wee trout was that all the mature salmon lice it was carrying were on its head and gill plate, there were none on its rear dorsal region or at the anal fin where they are usually found, I'm not sure of the significance of this but it is unusual.

Check out the state of these 'salmon' too, wonder how sustainable they feel, taken just under a year ago. Couldnt get shots of the already dead ones at the bottom of the cage, they were too deep down.

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Heres this wee fella, nowhere near as bad as the one I referred to above, this one was healthy enough and though heavily infested about the head you couldnt definitively say that this was an unnatural, albeit a nasty load of lice. The other boy, the photos of which arent digital and will have to be scanned for sharing here, (the one with 150 odd lice on it)that was a different story. It was one of many fish encountered over the years, after the introduction of the fish cages which had loads of lice the like of which no one had ever witnessed before, emaciated fish with large areas of skin missing which only just just made it to the river before dying from their injuries as a result of lice infestation. How many fish died in the sea before running the river out of sight and out of mind? If the lice were killing the adult fish they were eating the smolts alive in the late spring.

One thing that did make me wonder about this wee trout was that all the mature salmon lice it was carrying were on its head and gill plate, there were none on its rear dorsal region or at the anal fin where they are usually found, I'm not sure of the significance of this but it is unusual.

Check out the state of these 'salmon' too, wonder how sustainable they feel, taken just under a year ago. Couldnt get shots of the already dead ones at the bottom of the cage, they were too deep down.

I have seen loads of fish like that on the river Nore.I think its spent fish that did not return to the sea and end up dead in the river.

Hello snots, they could possibly be spent, I'm not sure how fish go about spawning cooped up in a cage in the sea. These 2 havent ever seen a river, theyre in a farm off the coast. What I do know about them is they are stressed and horribly damaged as a result of being intensively farmed, they are going to die soon and lie rotting a few feet below the other supposedly healthy fish that are destined for supermarket shelves. I still havent figured out just how an otherwise clean lookin fish has had its tail region eroded away so badly but the other one is riddled with fungus and is emaciated. Salmon are not supposed to live in a confined space eating man made pellets that have to contain red dye to make their flesh at least look like that of wild salmons. Ive seen farmed fish flesh prior to being fed the dyed pellets, its a putrid grey. Then if you open a fish in the process of having its flesh dyed to supermarket colour, they are marbled grey and red. It looks like rasberry ripple ice cream or one of those marbled sponge cakes. It might look a bit like salmon on a plate(when its dyed all the way through) but as for taste and texture its a joke, its foul. Some people have only ever tasted farmed salmon, they dont know what the experience of eating fresh wild fish salmon is.

I know a fish dealer who supplies hotels and restaraunts with a van. Used to shift wild salmon by the stone weekly. Demand for salmon fell so badly in the restaraunts he supplied after the advent of salmon farming he he went from a situation where he couldnt meet demand to where he couldnt move a single fish a week. People werent ordering salmon anymore because theyd had a very disappointing experience with farmed s*** on their plate and they werent willing to take the risk again. Chefs and hotel owners refused point blank to buy any and he ws selling the real thing.

i suppose the ones with the fugus get the breadcrumb coating shows all the same how much tlc these farms give there stock when those sick ones are left in the pen.glad i dont eat farmed fish

There are more sustainable forms of fish farming eg. fish farmed to the organic standard. Personally though, I'd rather eat wild caught fish anytime and preferably fish caught myself rather than commercially.

Totally Agree. Haven't eaten Farmed salmon for years, and hopefully I never will for the above reasons. If every angler were to do the same and pass the message onto friends and Family, it would hopefully make a huge impact.

Kev

i fully agree kev,i have refused to eat farmed fish for quite a few years,and also have converted my family away from tuna,if the demand goes down,then there is no monetry value in the fish.i know that we are only a few,but if EVERYONE does it..........

see on the lunchtime news 500 licenses are still on the ministers desk .some of them made 2 yrs ago now the ifa want them given out they say it will create 2000 jobs for locals thats an extra 5oo fishfarms to contend with http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0319/fishing.html