In Cod we Trust . .

Did any one see the above article in yesterdays Irish Times (p.2) ?

Fine photo there too of the first market sized sea farmed cod (dead- so viewer discretion required) this countries fisheries industry has produced.

I'm not particularly a fan of farmed fish, but I'd say this has to be a positive step in curtailing the netting of the dwindling Irish wild stocks -besides providing jobs in coastal traditional fisheries reliant areas.

I remember watching a programme on BBC (Seawatch?) not long ago about a Cod farm, think it was off Shetland or Norway but the fish were huge and bloody ugly!! Most had hump backs, bent bodies or some sort of odd shape!

Don't know what impact it would have on the wild salmon returns to Irish rivers, remember seeing an article in The observer couple years back about a salmon river on the west coast of Scotland which had a cod farm close to the river mouth. The river owners seemed to think it was affecting the wild salmon returns.

http://www.fishupdate.com/
http://www.thefishsite.com/
have a few articles on Cod farming.

Ryan,

Ever get the feeling we just killed that thread...... :lol:

And everyone else,

I don't mean to sound negative all the time. Honestly. It's just that a lot of what sounds like a good idea in the commercial 'fishery' industry.....really has a downside that isn't broadcast so widely. It really is all about spin. I mean, farmed cod sounds like a fabulous idea...until you stop to wonder where the feed comes from etc. I sometimes wonder what the hell happend to responsible journalism.....

I don't have all the answers, but I know some questions shouldn't be asked...like what happens if we put Mr Fork into Mrs Electrical Outlet. I don't (or I'm sure you don't either) have to think long and hard to figure out that it wouldn't be a good idea, given what we all sort of know about electricity - without getting into a fundamental understanding of amps, volts, watts, coulombs etc. In case anyone is wondering, do not try this at home. Not good. Trust me. Too long in the electrical game. Didn't bother with the fork mostly, but had the odd run in with Mrs
Electrical Outlet. Ouch. To the person who decided it was a good idea to wire a socket off the mains side of the fuse board and then ask me to change it without telling me, you know who you are. Shame on you. You could have blown a whole ESB sub-station. Or killed me. But I digress....

Any time you hear about the next 'miracle' farming method, stop and think. Think cows fed with offal, think BSE. Think CJD. Think farmed 'salmon' and the mess that it is. Think about some greedy git figuring a way to a short term end run around mother nature and the fact that so far in that game, we're batting 0/whatever. Think....

I have a question (which isn't intended to sound facetious, but probably will, sorry Pat/Andy :D). If both commercial fishing and farming are environmentally unsound, how is an ordinary Joe/Jane (non-angler) supposed to eat fish?

Good question. One answer is, get rid of industrial fishing. Using 5 tons of mackerel or herring etc to make one ton of farmed salmon, for example, is nuts. A waste of good fish. Ok, that sort of rules out farming carnivorous fish, but that's no bad idea.

Filter feeders, like mussels, oysters and other bi-valves can be farmed. And there are a number of species of fish which are herbivores - again, should be possible to farm sustainably.

Meanwhile, having got rid of the existence and need for boats where a crew of a half dozen can land hundreds of tons of fish daily, there might even be a future for a decent fleet of small-scale fishermen. Y'know, the ones that actually come from here, really live around the coast etc - working in a fishery where the quality of fish landed is worth money, is sustainable.

Another big problem with the fishing industry today is that the value-add is done outside the catching area. It's a similar problem with farming. Fishermen and farmers will complain any day about the poor prices they get. Look at the cost of fish or farm produce in a shop (or restaurant) and figure where the real money is made - it's in the processing and supply, rather than production end.

It really is possible to have viable and sustainable fishing and aquaculture, just not the way we do it now.

before this article and the announcement of the first farmed cod - for sale

there was a big pr thing - think it was before christmas - about the potential for farmed cod - there was a news conference - vested interests and tds in tow

it was on the news - and everyone on it had one thing to say SUSTAINABLE - they said it over and over again

how do they get away with it

what amazes me the most is the salmon and the cod are fecked - yet what is peddled at most people as fish for sale

bar a few conoseaurs people just choose to eat fish - because its good for them with all these - omega 3 adds etc. - low fat yadda yadda

they dont really care whether its pollack or cod - the vast majority

so why is the focus so much on the two most threatened species - it doesnt make any sense what so ever

at the end of the day 5 into 1 doesnt go

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

Ryan,

Ever get the feeling we just killed that thread...... :lol:

And everyone else,

Did we ? :oops: :lol:


As they say one thing is normally affecting something else and in cases like the fish farms the average Joe only hears & knows what they wants us to believe.

I used to live in a small village that had a large rainbow trout farm, knew all the workers, owner etc.. BTW it was a great place to improve your hand lining skills :roll: but the guys wouldn't eat the fish, they tasted horrible and they new what the fish food consisted off but send it to a restaurant, supermarket etc & the customer thinks it great they're getting what they believe is fresh fish, but with a difference.

If you feed something with unnatural food products, something has to change.

As Pat mentioned take cows & BSE as one example.

Just hope some bright spark doesn't think "hey i can start a Tuna farm off the south west coast"! takes more live bait to feed them than a salmon farm etc, they won't eat pellet food! :evil:

Tuna ranching: big biz in the Med and off Australia. Not helping the tuna stocks....

Tuna ranching seems to be far and away worse than salmon farming as far as feed conversion goes: 25kg of feed fish for 1kg of tuna.....it has been calculated that 225,000 tonnes of fish were thrown to the Mediterranean in 2003 to feed tuna, some of it coming from highly overexploited fisheries.

More [url=http://weblog.greenpeace.org/oceandefenders/archive/2006/06/we_all_hate_tuna_ranching.html]here[/url] ...

those are crazy stats

The whole finfish farming industry may be unsustainable, and for my part, I would love to see it all go under. Its totally destroyed the sea trout fishing in the west of Ireland due to the salmon farms being incubators for sea lice larvae in their millions, which then infest sea trout as they migrate to sea to feed.
I've personally seen juvenile sea trout returning prematurely to freshwater to try to shed lice, that were absolutely covered with lice and bare skin and blood where healthy skin and scales should be.

But the finfish farming industry here is not going away any time soon, certainly as long as the EU imposes import levies on Norwegian and Chilean farmed salmon to keep Irish and Scottish growers in business.
I would much rather see cod being farmed than salmon, as the cod is not a host for the salmon lice that are responsible for the collapse of sea trout.
(By the way, all this is published in peer-reviewed and reputable scientific journals, many times over, yet the people responsible for monitoring and enforcing legal lice levels on farms - the MI - will dispute it :roll: )

Since that cod farm opened in Bertraghboy Bay, there have been no salmon farmed there, and guess what, in the last 2 years sea trout began to return in good numbers and good condition to local rivers. Some coincidence!