Aquaculture Archives - One Fish Foundation

Building Mussels

November 29, 2018October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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Why in hell didn’t I schedule this on a more temperate day?

It was 21 degrees at 5:30 a.m. when I scraped the first significant frost coat off my car’s windshield to drive down to the Maine Wharf in Portland. Dawn was slowly breaking over the Atlantic, faint whisps of light harkening a chilly day on the water.

Though I was layered up, prepared to don some brand new, drab green Grundens oil slicks to shield myself from the forecasted wind and hopefully stay dry, I did begin to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.

What better way to get a sense of how mussel farms work than to get muddy? Doing it in mid-November in Maine just adds some texture to the experience. For me, this was research. I spend a lot of time talking about shellfish and finfish aquaculture in classrooms and at different speaking engagements. I wanted to have firsthand knowledge of what it takes to seed, grow and harvest some of the best mussels available.

Fortunately, Matt Moretti, co-owner of Bangs Island Mussels is happy to welcome visitors to the operation and let them get muddy if they so choose. They just need to understand that harvest days are fixed, regardless of the weather, because that’s how market demand works. Selling high-quality, responsibly grown mussels to restaurants and wholesalers across the country means you don’t get to choose the harvest conditions.

Portland has 12 working piers, including the Maine Wharf. Some of these piers are under threat from developers.

And so we pulled away from the dock as an early winter sunrise painted the sky pink, orange and light blue. Bangs Island lies just east of Chebeague Island, and not far from Portland’s historic working waterfront as the crow flies. But it still takes about an hour in a re-purposed fishing boat that doesn’t cruise over 15 mph.

The mussels live, eat and grow on hundreds of ropes dangling from solid wood beams on three large rafts securely anchored a couple hundred yards from shore. The entire operation spans about 3 acres. Each raft has up to 2 million mussels or so in different stages of development, from newly seeded spat (the small seed that grows into three-inch adults) to dinner-size.

Millions of mussels at different stages of the three-year growth cycle.

Bivalve aquaculture 101

When discussing different harvest methods in classrooms or community events, I also talk about aquaculture practices. Since aquaculture has surpassed wild caught seafood for global direct human consumption, farmed fish, shellfish and seaweed play critical roles in any sustainable seafood discussion.

Just as with wild harvest methods, different aquaculture methods have a range of ecological impacts, some of which are beneficial, but many of which are disastrous. Industrial finfish aquaculture promises “to feed the world.” Yet the litany of debilitating ecological impacts ranging from massive fish escapes (threatening wild populations) to disease, antibiotic use, algal blooms (from excess nutrients from waste and undigested food), sea lice, feed (grinding up wild forage fish populations to make feed pellets), etc. have called into question the overall benefit of such operations.

Bivalve aquaculture avoids almost all of these issues. Mussels, clams and oysters are filter feeders. They eat plankton, not ground up forage fish, thereby reducing the particulate matter in bays and estuaries and rendering those ecosystems healthier for a broad swath of marine species. Properly siting them in areas with good current enhances their food source and minimizes oversaturation of nutrients and disease.

That said, they are constantly tested to make sure they are safe to eat, particularly after heavy rain events, which can elevate the amount of unhealthy nutrients and toxins they filter.

Yes, quality control is paramount.

From mud to tote

Bangs Island Mussels currently operates from a barge with shed walls and a roof to protect the crew and the mussels from the elements: driving rain, snow, sleet or blazing sun.

The process begins with a large winch that hauls up the long, heavy (up to 500 pounds) ropes of mussels and millions of other tiny organisms that attach themselves to the biomass overtime. The winch slowly brings the rope up to a gateway that, with the help of someone standing there, strips the mussels from the rope. Sometimes the clumps can be the size of a soccer ball, but mussels and all have to come off the rope.

After the rope has passed through the gate and is mussel-free, you set it aside to be hosed off and re-seeded later with mussels that are too small for market (more on this later). Then you wind up the next rope.

Once stripped, the mussels go up a conveyor belt to a brush declumper, a big machine with a series of rollers and stiff bristles that appear to gobble up the black shells. In fact, these bristles are helping to break up clusters of mussels and remove barnacles, seaweed and other organisms such as sea squirts that can attach themselves to the mussels and the rope. Someone stationed above the “mouth” of this machine physically pushes the mussels into the narrow gaps of the bristled rollers. It’s a physically taxing process.

The mussels that come out of the first section of that machine are relatively clean. They are dropped onto a grader, which has another system of adjacent rollers with spirals, like giant screws, that are closely spaced. This array weeds out the mussels Moretti and his crew deem too small for market size. As the screws turn, the smaller mussels slip through the cracks onto a chute and into a waiting bin to be re-seeded onto ropes and dropped back into the water to grow.

Market size mussels feed out into another bin that is dragged to the boat and packed in ice in huge totes arranged on the boat deck. Someone stands near the area where the market size mussels arrive and sorts through any remaining clumps held together by seaweed and their beards.

The declumper at the top of the photo uses yellow bristled rollers to separate and clean mussels before depositing them on the grader, which separates the market-sized product from the soon-to-be-re-seeded.

We processed about 2400 pounds of mussels (about average for this time of year) in a little over three hours. I was pretty damn happy to sit down and eat lunch … at 10:30 a.m. I felt satisfied with the teamwork involved in a surprisingly smooth and efficient operation considering the task at hand. Everyone had a role, and rotated around a bit to help each other. And the crew patiently coached me on technique and timing.

Measuring up

After lunch, we began re-seeding the ropes with mussels that were too small. I say too small – we returned mussels averaging just a little over two inches in length on the long edge – even though I’ve been served Canadian mussels that size in New England restaurants.

Getting mussels back on a rope and into the water is an intricate process aided by a machine that looks like a product of Jules Verne’s imagination. Called the seeder, or socking machine, this contraption draws clean rope through a type of snare where the mussels are dropped from a hopper onto the rope and enclosed by a thin cotton mesh that wraps the mussels like a sock. This sock will hold the mussels in place until they attach to the rope, before the net naturally biodegrades.

It’s a bit of a painstaking process in that you want to ensure the mesh goes on properly and ties off the mussels so they stay on the rope. We loaded several ropes back onto the raft.

The seeder, or socking machine in action. Not quite ready for prime time, these mussels need a little more time “on the vine” to get to Bangs Island size. (Turn up the volume).

Quality is everything

Next we took water samples for the state Division of Marine Resources to check the level of nutrients and toxins in the water. These tests, and direct mussel samples, are frequent, and ensure the safety of the mussels that go to market.

Back at the Maine Wharf, the mussels were hoisted off the boat with a powerful hydraulic lift, and brought into the warehouse where a team waited to do final sorting, grading, cleaning and bagging for market. As with the harvest operation, the final steps toward market readiness are meticulous.

Bangs Island has a reputation among chefs and foodies for big meats. That is, not only are the shells generally bigger than most other mussels on the market, but the meat inside them is bigger too.

Having opted for Bangs Island’s harvest for over a decade in restaurants and my home cooking (an excellent addition to gumbo!), it was with a deeper appreciation the next day as I set out to cook a couple pounds for my family. Harvested with my own hands not far from where I live, with a very coordinated process rooted in getting the details right, these mussels drove home one of my classroom and restaurant mantras: Know your seafood. Know your fisherman, or seafood producer.

The fruits of spending a chilly day on the water. Follow this link to a recipe for mussels San Remo from my friend Chef Rob Martin at 1652 Restaurant in York, Maine.

Thanks to Matt Moretti and my crew mates John, Zack and Ben for welcoming me aboard and teaching me the ropes! It was worth muddying my new Grundens on that chilly morning to build a valuable experience that I’ll share in classrooms and restaurants.

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Farmed Salmon Jailbreak Exposes Systemic Industry Flaws

August 31, 2017October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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UPDATE Sept. 3, 2017 Recent reports indicate Cooke Aquaculture Pacific (subsidiary of Cooke Aquaculture) acknowledged in permit filings in February that the three-pen farm that failed in August was “nearing the end of its serviceable life” with visible rust and corrosion. Part of the permit application was to re-align the net pens so they would not be broadside to one of the strongest currents on the west coast. The application was filed shortly after Cooke bought the farm from Icicle Seafoods in 2016. But Cooke never fixed or replaced the pens, and a last-ditch attempt to stop the pens from drifting in the powerful currents in July proved futile on Aug. 19 when structures collapsed and more than 160,000 fish escaped.

Cooke reports that it has recovered over 140,000 fish from a total of 305,000, leaving about 160,000 fish that escaped.

There is increasing pressure from several fronts, including some state legislators and several regional native American tribes to stop the expansion of aquaculture in Puget Sound.

August 30, 2017 — In case you missed it, several thousand (potentially more than 300,000) Atlantic salmon escaped from net pens off Cypress Island in Washington state last week.

The idea that such high numbers of Atlantic salmon could potentially out-compete wild, native Pacific salmon for food, spawning grounds, etc. or even mate with them, has several environmental groups and commercial fishermen sounding alarms.

We should all be concerned.

Fish escapes from net pens are nothing new. It has happened several times with different ecological and social impacts in the past 30 years. Net pens are vulnerable to big storms which can crumple them up and leaving gaping holes.

Containment…?

This particular incident, which happened on August 19 at a facility owned by the massive Canadian firm Cooke Seafoods, is particularly notable for several reasons.

Cooke initially blamed the crumpling of the net on extreme high tide and strong currents related to the solar eclipse. Cooke has walked back that claim, instead blaming only abnormally high tides and strong currents. Scientists say the tides that day were actually milder than earlier in the summer.
In 2016, Cooke purchased the 30-year-old pens, which are located in an area that has one of the strongest currents (up to 4 mph) on the West Coast. Yes, you want strong enough currents to flush all of the waste and undigested food, antibiotics, what have you, to prevent the growth of lethal algal blooms. But you’re also setting up the inherent risk of net pen damage.
Cooke initially said that 4,000 fish escaped. Now they say they won’t know how many fish escaped until the final harvest (both in and around the farm and further out to sea) is complete. That could be never.
The state of Washington has frozen any new permitting for marine aquaculture. This is significant for Cooke, which has plans to extend its operations in the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.
Washington state aquaculture operations produce about 17 million pounds of farmed salmon per year, making it the state with the largest marine farmed finfish production in the U.S.
The state of Washington Dept. of Natural Resources has sent a notice of default to Cooke, claiming that Cooke violated its lease agreement (the co. leases the undersea land from the state) because of the environmental harm from the net pen failure.
Environmentalist organization Wild Fish Conservancy has filed an intent to sue Cooke for violating the Clean Water Act as a result of the “escape.”
The state asked for help from commercial and recreational anglers to catch/harvest/kill the Atlantic salmon in the wild.
Based in New Brunswick, Cooke has operations in Eastern Canada, Spain, Scotland, Chile, and Maine and claims they will produce more than 275,000 metric tons of seafood every year and generate $1.8 billion annually.

Long-term implications

So what does this all mean?

For me, it is yet another illustration that industrial scale finfish aquaculture has a long way to go before it truly delivers a net environmental, ecological, sociological and yes, financial positive.

The Cooke operation is sited perilously close to native Pacific salmon migratory routes. Subsistence and artisanal fishermen in the Lummi Nation, a Native American tribe in Washington State, join their voices with environmentalists fearing the ecological impacts of several hundred thousand non-native fish competing with struggling native Pacific salmon species like Chinook for food and habitat.

Washington state posted an identification guide to help fishers distinguish Atlantic salmon (right) from native Pacific salmon species. (Photo by Megan Farmer/KUOW)

Young Chinook are now leaving West Coast rivers to head to sea, and could be a prime food source for the 10-pound Atlantic salmon swimming about. Other potential impacts the farmed fish could have on wild stocks such as Chinook and Coho salmon now returning to spawn include increased competition for food, the potential for spreading disease and potentially weakening the gene pool from inter-breeding.

Many scientists agree we don’t have enough information to really know the impact of farmed salmon escapes. Some researchers doubt whether farmed Atlantic salmon can survive in the wild. Others doubt that they would really mate with wild, genetically different species, or that if a few did, the consequences would be negligible.

In the absence of real, credible data, I side with those who are concerned. Just because we don’t know with certainty all of the ecological threats escaped farmed salmon could pose on wild populations, we should NOT ignore the potentially significant damage. Put another way, this issue should serve as yet another warning that profit-driven finfish aquaculture, sometimes deemed marine feedlots because of industrial approach, is inherently dangerous.

It’s dangerous because these types of issues: escapes, algal blooms, disease, antibiotic use, etc. continue despite corporate attempts at greenwashing. Witness the mess created by the Chilean farmed salmon industry, which lost over a billion dollars last year after a huge algal bloom sparked a deadly bacteria outbreak that killed millions of fish.

Just because there isn’t tons of research doesn’t mean there aren’t readily identifiable stories supporting the need for caution. For example, one study from the University of Victoria relies on DNA sampling to confirm that some escaped Atlantic salmon had spawned in the Tsitik River in British Columbia in the late ‘90s. Another study showed that Atlantic salmon inhabited more than half of 41 known Pacific salmon rivers on Vancouver Island.

Scale

All of this is set against a new industry dynamic in which global aquaculture operations are scooping up smaller wild harvest operations. Last year, Cooke purchased Icicle Seafoods, Inc. of Alaska, a longtime, well-recognized company specializing in wild harvest of Alaska seafood and farmed Atlantic salmon.

Is this simply an attempt to diversify its seafood portfolio to minimize the financial risks of salmon farming, or is it an attempt at greenwashing the mounting concerns of farmed salmon by providing wild caught product? As my colleagues and executives of the Sitka Salmon Shares community supported fishery Nic Mink and Marsh Skeele write in their latest blog, “You buy farmed fish: they win. You buy wild fish: they win.”

I am not opposed to aquaculture in principal. I know several bivalve farmers who are doing good things with oysters, mussels and clams and are taking care not to over-crowd their beds. I know there are certain small-scale, artisanal finfish operations that provide subsistence to impoverished communities in Africa with minimal ecological footprint.

But as with many issues in fisheries, scale simply magnifies the damage when something goes wrong. So we need to do more research on the potential impacts of escaped farmed finfish on wild populations and ecosystems. We also need to look deeper into lowering the cost and technology barriers to land-based re-circulating systems that reuse the water and minimize the ecological impact of net pen operations. Finally, we have to re-think how we feed these farmed fish because grinding up millions of tons of forage fish like Menhaden for fish pellets every year stresses a critical layer in marine food webs.

Would that the industry takes note … sooner rather than later.

Additional reading:

Scientific American article diving into the issues surrounding last week’s Cooke Aquaculture escape.

Seattle Times story providing more detail about the Lummi Nation response to the escapes.

Youtube video by activist Alexandra Morton with some intense footage showing disease spread in Atlantic salmon net pens in Pacific Northwest.

TED talk with activist chef Dan Barber discussing an innovative and ecologically beneficial fish farm in Spain.

Cascadia Weekly column by former fisherman and activist Anne Mosness providing a good historical perspective on how industrial finfish aquaculture, or marine feedlots, rose to prominence in the Pacific Northwest.

Wild Fish Conservancy petition to Washington state Governor Jay Inslee to stop the expansion of salmon farming in Puget Sound.

Video of sea lice dispersal from salmon farms into wild rivers in Norway posted by Clayoquot Action.

Top Photo credit: Wild Fish Conservancy

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Aquaculture, Antibiotics and Their Dark Path to Our Diets

January 17, 2017October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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“Why does that matter?”

It’s one of the first questions I get when I tell middle school students that 90% of the seafood eaten in this country is imported.

So I begin with the big picture, that much of that seafood is coming from countries that put a lot of chemicals in their seafood. Countries like China, Thailand, Chile and Ecuador don’t have the same health safety standards the U.S. does. I watch their facial expressions as I start talking about how and why antibiotics, hormones, bleach and other chemicals are used.

In just a few minutes, it does matter. They care where their seafood comes from.

Massive floating community of fish farms in Luoyuan Bay, in south-eastern China’s Fujian province.

Why this happens

Sometimes the middle school students ask why this happens. More often though, that question comes from high school students and adults. I then explain how the FDA is outgunned simply by the fact agents only inspect 1-2% of all seafood imports. Over the past few years, I’ve watched the FDA issue more and more alerts authorizing agents to outright halt various shrimp and other seafood shipments from China, Malaysia, India and other countries because of links to US-banned antibiotics.

But the answer is really more complicated than that. Part of it has to do with U.S. consumption habits. We eat a lot of shrimp, but we don’t want to pay much for it. So the much cheaper product from Asia or South America floods supermarkets where consumers scoop it up without looking at the label or questioning the origin.

Lack of transparency

Part of the answer has to do with profit and the complex international seafood export industry. Bloomberg Business last month released an exhaustively researched, but well narrated story about this complex system. The report details how much of the seafood from China, which owns 60% of the $90 billion global aquaculture market, is shipped through other countries before arriving in the Western Hemisphere, thereby avoiding steep tariffs and close inspection (when it happens). This process is called transshipping, and it’s becoming widespread and difficult to track down, further masking true seafood origin.

I recommend reading the story if you have 20 minutes or so. Here is the link.

Here are a couple of highlights:

Asia has a centuries-old tradition of linking aquaculture and agriculture. Waste from pigs goes into ponds where tilapia and geese are raised. The tilapia gets much of their protein and nutrients from that waste.
As diseases have increased in pigs, farmers have increased the use of antibiotics to fight the disease. The antibiotics pass to the fish and/or shrimp.
Larger operations treat shrimp and fish with antibiotics to ward off disease.
Increased antibiotic use has given rise to potentially lethal antibiotic-resistant superbugs, which are becoming more common.
A recent study found that between 42% and 83% of Chinese shrimp carry bacteria that can destroy penicillin and most of its variants.
A 2006 FDA study found a quarter of all Asian seafood tested had traces of chemicals banned in the U.S. This has led to a succession of FDA bans and alerts.
The increased scrutiny has pushed some foreign seafood export operations into transshipping through countries like Malaysia that don’t have the high tariffs and increased inspection standards imposed by the FDA on China, for example.
Tracking the origin of transshipped seafood can be difficult. The Bloomberg report cites examples of companies that have been accused by the FDA, and that have folded, with new export companies cropping up shortly thereafter.

So what’s the lesson? Read labels. Ask questions. And if you can’t get seafood that is local or at least domestic to the U.S., consider other options. If you just absolutely have to have the farmed shrimp from Thailand because of the price, understand the implications … to your health and to the support of exporters more concerned with profit than customer health.

We can’t effect change in the domestic seafood web without at least first getting smarter about it.

That we can do.

Top photo: Tiger prawn farm in Malaysia.

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UN Report: We’re Growing More Seafood Than We’re Catching

August 11, 2016October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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So what happens when the world’s wild-caught seafood supply is tapped beyond its capacity to feed the growing population? How do we sustain a human population that could reach 9.7 billion by 2050 when nearly a third of that number currently relies on seafood for 20% of their diet?

These are some of the questions posed, and somewhat answered in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization State of the World’s Fisheries 2016 report issued in July. However, the net results may leave many consumers conflicted over the need to fight hunger with the need to address industrial aquaculture’s ecological impacts. This is especially true since producing more food won’t necessarily fix the root causes of hunger.

Aquaculture on the rise…

The report’s authors suggest that aquaculture has, and will continue to play a critical role in meeting this demand. They point to aquaculture’s substantial growth to back this assertion. In 2000, aquaculture produced 27.3 million tons of seafood globally. Wild capture produced 94.8 million tons. In 2014 (the latest year for global UN FAO data), aquaculture was 73.8 million tons, and wild capture was little changed at 93.4 million tons. So as wild capture has remained relatively flat in 14 years, aquaculture increased 170%.

Global per capita fish consumption has risen above 20 kg for the first time in history. If we assume that wild capture stays flat based on global efforts to fish to maximum sustainable yield – the most we can fish without harming stocks’ ability to replenish themselves – then, yes, we need to meet the growing global demand in the face of expected population growth to 9.7 billion by 2050. The questions are how do we do that responsibly and at what cost?

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the numbers. The general aquaculture totals: Finfish, 49.8 million tons; mollusks, 16.1 million tons; crustaceans, 6.9 million tons; other aquatic animals including amphibians, 7.3 million tons.

The report also states that about half of the 73.8 million tons of farmed seafood comes from fish, shellfish and plants that are non-fed species. That is, carp, mussels, kelp and similar organisms that don’t require the financial and environmental cost of fish pellets, often derived from forage fish, critically important links in the seafood web.

Additionally, for the first time, farmed fish exceeded wild caught fish for food consumption in 2014.

Think about that. We’re making more seafood than we’re harvesting.

…at what cost?

So all of this suggests we’re ramping up to meet the growing demand. Several countries are chipping in. No surprise that China is the big dog, accounting for nearly 60% of all aquaculture products, followed by India, Viet Nam, Bangladesh and Egypt. Salmon and trout are the top produced fish or shellfish (wild caught and farmed) on the planet, taking over the spot long held by shrimp. Norway and Chile are the top salmon producers.

It is the legacy of farmed shrimp and salmon that raises red flags. Yes, Chile is the second-largest salmon grower. But its industry is reeling from a disastrous start of the year: posting nearly $1 billion in losses due to ravaging algal blooms that destroyed millions of fish; crippling protests from commercial fishermen who blocked delivery of surviving farmed salmon; and, recent reports of staggeringly high (and ineffective) use of antibiotics.

Couple this with widespread reports of problems with shrimp farming, largely in Asia and South and Central America. Again heavy dosing of antibiotics, hormones to accelerate growth, and destruction of critical mangrove habitat are major issues. Look no further than frequent U.S. Food and Drug Administration alerts on imported farmed shrimp containing antibiotics the agency deems carcinogenic.

As with industrial agriculture, the push to increase seafood production and profits often storms past responsible practices. The result is often product that compares poorly to wild caught species from a nutritional, taste and environmental impact perspective.

The trouble with industrial Ag and Aq

All of these numbers and the consequent narratives of industrial aquaculture gone wrong overseas suggest we need to reassess industrial scale finfish and shrimp production to eliminate collateral damage. It can leave many people conflicted. Yes, hunger and rapid population growth are significant challenges that require global collaboration. And perhaps aquaculture can continue to play a role in addressing those problems.

But there are inherent flaws in the logic that industrial agriculture and aquaculture can “feed the world” or end hunger. First, the industrialization of food systems seeks to increase food supplies. But that model doesn’t address root causes of hunger such as poverty, inequity and fairness. In fact, some researchers believe the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet…up to 1.5 times as much.

Unfortunately, much of that food goes toward production of grains for industrial agriculture feed and corn for ethanol. This food system does little to address undernourishment. How can someone in Mali eat industrial-produced grains if he or she can’t afford it, much less find it? What about the small-scale fisherman in Oceana who can’t even afford the fresh seafood he harvests?

So no. Aquaculture is not a panacea for world hunger. But small-scale operations, which take a smart, balanced approach that minimizes ecological damage, can benefit local and regional food systems by providing locally produced seafood with minimal environmental costs.

For example, raising mollusks like oysters, mussels, clams and scallops is generally cleaner and even beneficial because it requires no feed, and as filter feeders, they actually clean bays and estuaries. Production of aquatic plants falls into the same category. Farming kelp, seaweed and other plants has increased substantially in the past decade, jumping 102% from 13.5 million tons in 2005 to 27.3 million tons in 2014 at a market value of $5.6 billion in 2014. New approaches, such as Bren Smith’s 3D Ocean Farming, are creating clean, self-sustaining and diverse marine polyculture farms that produce shellfish and plants.

A better way needed

Since industrial aquaculture is already embedded in global food systems, we need to devote more energy to minimize or eliminate the downstream impacts of current industrial scale finfish and shrimp aquaculture. The rapidity with which the deadly virus spread among fish farms in Chile earlier this year confirms a long-held belief by some scientists and environmentalists that cramming tens of thousands of salmon into tight pens creates fertile ground for deadly diseases to spread rapidly. We need to figure out better ways to produce farmed fish and shellfish to minimize those hazards.

We need to devote more money, time and effort into making closed re-circulating systems – which reduce environmental impacts of escapes, disease spread to wild stocks, and resource depletion – more affordable and accessible to more operators around the world.

Pollock from Finlander — Fresh, abundant pollock from the M/V Finlander out of Eliot, Me.

Aquaculture practices and regulations vary widely around the world. Regulations are tighter domestically than most anywhere else in the world, significantly restricting the use of antibiotics and hormones. But we can do more to make the industry more sustainable and accountable from a resource, environmental, and health standpoint. We have to. The current situation leaves many consumers conflicted over current practices despite the increasing need to feed the planet and frustrated there hasn’t been enough effort to improve the industry.

A consumer’s best tool is knowledge. Find out more about the provenance of the fish or shellfish we eat, and we can at least safeguard what we and our families eat. When in doubt, ask questions and buy locally caught, responsibly harvested species that are abundant. Together, an informed customer base could perhaps spur some of the change discussed above.

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Chilean Farmed Salmon: Poster Child for Caution

July 20, 2016October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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I remember the first time I tasted wild salmon. I was almost 10, and my dad had just returned from two weeks fishing the Whale River in Ungava Bay, Northern Quebec. This was 1974, and my dad brought two big crates with two 15 lb fish, packed with peat moss, sawdust and dry ice. The stories my dad told of these big leaping fish, the rugged beauty of the land, camping in tents and cooking over fires made the fish taste wild. I wanted to go and catch my own salmon and eat it. That didn’t happen for a while.

The best seafood I’ve ever tasted was a salmon I’d caught 15 minutes before I gingerly grabbed pieces of it out of a smoldering, greasy pan during a downpour at Twin Pools on the LaPoile River in Newfoundland in 2011. We’d hiked seven miles of terrain that ranged from peat bogs, to dense forest and giant boulders. I felt like I was in Middle Earth. No plates. No silverware. One crumpled napkin. No seasoning save for the dregs of some salt and pepper the guide scraped out of his coat pocket. He had to lean over the pan with his rain jacket flared while the tender pink flesh glazed over in the hot butter.

Nothing has topped that experience, before or since.

I think back on those experiences when I think about how far we’ve pulled away from our food sources. I can only imagine what the Atlantic salmon populations were like before we started damming their spawning habitats and fishing them with wanton abandon.

I guess the rise of salmon farming was an inevitable consequence of Atlantic salmon’s broadly appealing taste and appearance, even as the fishery collapsed over the last hundred years. The intentions may have been somewhat innocent, if a bit naïve, at the outset. But naturally, the rush to make these struggling, expensive operations profitable, if not solvent, perhaps bypassed some warning signs. The push to accelerate time-to-market as well as gross pounds produced has yielded some unpleasant results.

Bloom to bust

Look no further than the train wreck that is the Chilean salmon farming industry. The second largest producer of farmed Atlantic salmon in the world (Norway is tops), Chile’s industry had a terrible first half of 2016. In a four week span in late February and early March, four of the nation’s top producers lost more than 9 million salmon to an algal bloom that released a deadly bacteria, killing more than $70 million worth of product. Total salmon losses since this first reported algal bloom or red tide are estimated at around 25 million salmon weighing about 100,000 metric tons or 15% of the country’s total production. Chile scientists blame the algal bloom on unseasonably warm temperatures due to El Nino. I’ll get back to that.

Authorities dumped thirty percent of the dead fish in a landfill, the rest in the ocean. A few weeks later, giant flotillas of dead sardines, jellyfish, birds and some mammals washed up on Chile’s shores, which were also covered with dead clams. Commercial fishermen reacted, complaining the die-offs and the federal closures of nearby fishing grounds were a direct result of bad aquaculture practices.

To protest, they set up blockades effectively stopping transport of any of the surviving farmed salmon to market. At one point, producers were losing $10 million a day related to both the die-off and the delivery interruption, with estimates at about $800 million total loss.

Irony you say? Hold on, it gets better.

Antibiotics to the rescue?

The just desserts, if you could call it that, to this festering stew of salmon, bacteria and political angst is a recent appellate court decision forcing the industry to reveal just how much antibiotics each of its producers has used. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by Oceana, claiming international markets had a right to know how the world’s 2^nd largest farmed salmon producer treated its fish. Until this decision, the true depth of Chile’s antibiotic use had been somewhat cloaked.

Now we know. And the details are stomach churning indeed. Government statistics released a couple of weeks ago show the proportion of antibiotics to tons of salmon increased from 2014 to 2015, during which time producers used 1.23 million pounds of antibiotics on about 895,000 tons of fish. On average, producers used about 660 grams of antibiotics per ton. One company, Australis Seafoods used 1,062 grams of antibiotics per metric ton of fish.

For comparison, consider that in 2008, Chile fed 385,635 kilograms of antibiotics to its salmon. Norway, the world’s largest farmed salmon producer? 941 kilograms.

So why is this such a big problem? For starters, it’s not good to ingest antibiotics unless you absolutely need them. You may have read about concerns over superbugs, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In essence, bacteria like E. coli or salmonella continue to evolve in their own quest to survive. And thus, some strains have developed a resistance to the antibiotics we would use to kill them, making us more susceptible to the nasty diseases these bugs can produce.

Consider some frightening statistics from the US Center for Disease Control: An estimated 2 million people in the U.S. become infected with antibiotic-resistant bugs, resulting in 23,000 deaths. Now consider that some of the antibiotics used in aquaculture operations outside the U.S. have been deemed carcinogenic by the Food and Drug Administration.

No thanks.

Now let’s get back to the rise of the algal blooms in Chile. As I said, local officials claim the unseasonably warm temperatures gave rise to the situation. There is truth in that statement. However, scientists believe there is another direct cause. Concentrations of tens of thousands of fish in close proximity swimming in their own feces leaves them vulnerable to disease. So the farming operations dump tons of antibiotics as a preventative measure against the disease. They also throw in tons of pellets to feed the fish.

Now imagine a veritable rainfall of feces, undigested food and antibiotics landing on the ocean floor. There’s a lot of excess nitrogen and phosphorous introduced to the ocean ecosystem that in theory would otherwise be balanced. The extra nutrients create an environment more suitable for algae to grow than most other organisms. And it grows quickly, sucking up much of the available oxygen and releasing a deadly bacteria that ultimately kills the fish. The fish die and the bacteria have more “food.”

Worse still, the antibiotics used against the primary salmon-killing bacteria, SRS, aren’t working, according to an official with the National Service of Fisheries and Aquaculture (Sernapesca).

So if you’re keeping score, Chile salmon farmers are pounding their product with antibiotics that aren’t really working. And consumers are paying for it.

I’d call that a real loss on many, many levels.

We’ll talk about the global impact of finfish aquaculture in further posts, and explore some operations that are taking a better approach.

Resources

Here are some additional links to interesting info about aquaculture:

Lenfest study on aquaculture pollution

National Geographic glossary on algal blooms

World Wildlife Fund Report on environmental impacts of aquaculture

Aquaculture

Canada Greenlights GE Salmon

June 5, 2016October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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Congrats Canada! You may become the first nation in the world to sell genetically modified animals as food.

That’s because the health ministry approved Mass.-based AquaBounty’s genetically engineered (GE) salmon as a safe food source for sale May 19. Dubbed “Frankenfish” by critics, AquAdvantage salmon are grown from eggs developed in Prince Edward Island and raised in land-based pens in Panama. AquAdvantage salmon promises to grow to market size twice as fast, requiring about a quarter of the feed than other farmed salmon. Proponents see this as reducing environmental impact while meeting increasing demand. Critics see it as a dangerous money grab setting a bad precedent.

From the Health Canada statement announcing the approval:

“GM [genetically modified] foods are becoming more common every day and are part of the regular diets of Canadians. GM foods that have been approved by Health Canada have been consumed in Canada for many years, and are safe and nutritious. Changes to the genes of plants and animals can improve food quality and production – for instance by reducing the need for pesticides, making crops resistant to drought, preventing bruising, or allowing foods to be grown more quickly.”

I’ll get back to that last sentence. First, some background. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration actually approved AquaAdvantage Salmon for sale last November, but ran into a wall of opposition, including a legal challenge filed by several environmental groups such as the Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch and Friends of the Earth. They claim the FDA does not have the authority to regulate GE animals based on a decades-old law used to regulate animal drugs and cosmetics. To wit, the FDA used the 1938 Food and Drug Cosmetic act to qualify the gene manipulation in GE salmon as an animal drug safe for human consumption.

Huh? As I’ve blogged before, this just seems like a ridiculous premise to be basing an important food safety issue potentially affecting millions of U.S. consumers.

So, the U.S. market may have to wait a bit longer for its shot at GE salmon than Canada. Unless there is another legal challenge in Canada. Ecology Action Centre in Halifax is currently appealing a federal court ruling against the centre’s previous suit challenging Canada’s approval of production of the eggs at a plant in PEI.

AquaBounty says it won’t have any market-ready salmon for a year.

Transparency and fairness

The issues surrounding GE salmon are many, but they generally center on transparency and fairness. Most critics want — at a minimum — mandatory labeling of all GE salmon, not to mention all GE foods. But the industry has fought this tooth and nail, claiming that it would unfairly bias consumer decisions because of the negative connotation widely associated with the genetically modified food industry.

This has been borne out by several studies showing that despite scientists’ proclamations that GE foods are safe for human consumption, an overwhelming majority of consumers, up to two-thirds or more, do not trust the science. Not only do they think GE salmon isn’t safe, they also don’t think scientists have a clear understanding of all of the potential health risks. Not coincidentally, a majority of scientists in a poll by the Pew Research Center and U.S. members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science suggests 88% of scientists polled believe genetically modified foods are safe to eat, while only 37% of the U.S. public thinks it’s safe.

I am in the same camp. I don’t think enough long-term, independent research has ruled out all risks associated with ingesting this type of hormone. Consider that FDA approval is based on the agency’s analysis of the test results paid for and submitted by AquaBounty … not by an independent third-party group with no vested interest in the outcome. For reference, see page 16 of this Congressional Research Service report, noting concerns over the FDA review process. To me, this leaves too much room to force the results into pre-determined conclusions, and perhaps explains in part why there is so much general skepticism about safety.

As such, I think the transparency issue is paramount. If the FDA or Health Canada deem GE salmon safe, they should require all such products be clearly labeled. One would think that if AquaBounty wants to appear trustworthy, it would label its product to demonstrate it’s not hiding anything from customers.

Ah, but there’s the problem. AquaBounty is following Monsanto’s playbook, spending tons of money to prevent labeling. Both the FDA and Health Canada claim that labeling is not necessary because “scientific research” suggests that there will be no “material difference” in the nutritional profiles between GE products and a non-GE counterpart. The FDA is offering GE producers like AquaBounty the option of voluntarily labeling the product, which is code for “You don’t have to do this.”

Here’s the fairness issue. Consumers wishing to buy organic pancake mix can look at the product to see a seal indicating the producer has paid a fee to have the product inspected and certified, along with a label that clearly indicates all of the ingredients. Hell, the same is true for a box of non-organic cookies. Salt, sugar, fat grams. All of that stuff must be listed somewhere. So why shouldn’t AquaBounty be compelled to tell the public that a hormone from an ocean pout (a completely different species) has been used in the “manufacturing” of that salmon fillet? Even if you can argue that doesn’t change the nutritional profile, it sure changes the ingredient list that yielded the end product.

Several big-name stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Safeway and Kroger have pledged to not sell GE salmon.

It’s a slippery slope. Approving GE salmon using antiquated animal drug legislation or whatever other rationale without a fully thorough, third-party, long-term analysis is bad enough. Allowing AquaBounty to hide its product in a veil of secrecy, deliberately misinforming consumers, is egregious.

Top photo credit: AquaBounty

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What’s In Your Imported Farm-Raised Shrimp?

May 3, 2016October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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A recent Food and Drug Administration alert about farmed shrimp from Asia raises health questions about the food system that delivers imported shrimp to the U.S. and the rest of the world. The notice also serves as a warning to consumers to know more about where the seafood comes from and how it was grown or harvested.

Forty-five out of 138 shipments (32%) from the Malaysian Peninsula sampled between October 1, 2014, through September 30, 2015 were found to have carcinogenic substances the FDA doesn’t want in our food. So the FDA has given inspectors the authority to reject all shrimp shipments from the Malaysian peninsula, save for a few exceptions, without a physical inspection.

What did they find? Antibiotics called nitrofurans and chloramphenicol, both of which have proved harmful to human health with prolonged exposure. Additionally, prolonged use can create antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can make matters worse.

So carcinogenic antibiotics were found in aquaculture shrimp from Asia.

Shock. Surprise.

The question is why. To better understand, let’s take a quick look at how shrimp farming typically works, and why it should give anyone pause when at a grocery store, seafood market or restaurant.

Big business, big risks

Shrimp farming is a huge business. Some estimates have global farmed shrimp at 3.7 million metric tons in 2014, worth between $12 billion and $15 billion dollars. The drive to grow profits as well as shrimp means increasing production.

Shrimp farming often starts by destroying and removing ecologically critical mangrove ecosystems (nurseries for many species) to create retention ponds where the shrimp will grow. These ponds are usually fed with seawater that passes through the ponds and often re-enters the ocean … carrying much of the waste filtered through ponds carrying thousands of pounds of shrimp and their feces. Many operations claim they filter the water before it enters the ocean, but…

But because shrimp are the number one consumed seafood around the world, many operations in Third World countries in Central and South America and Asia jam as many shrimp into these ponds as possible. Without proper filtration, those shrimp are highly susceptible to disease, because, you know, they’re swimming in their own poop.

Bad medicine

For the past decade or so, many operators have found it easier to use antibiotics and other potentially harmful materials to fend off the bacteria that could cause disease. Those antibiotics don’t just disappear overnight. They don’t always fend off disease either, resulting in huge losses. Just witness recent cases of “early mortality syndrome (EMS)” in Asia.

EMS is a devastating disease borne of a microorganism found in estuaries around the world, and showing up in overcrowded ponds that have poor filtration. The bacteria shut down the shrimp’s digestive system, killing the shrimp. Its infection rate is fast and efficient, meaning it can quickly kill all of the shrimp in a pond. EMS has mostly been found in Asia, but has also cropped up in Mexico.

To try and avoid catastrophic losses, growers choose from a menu of preventative measures, such as chlorine, superphosphates and ozone to disinfect the water, probiotics to fight off the bad bacteria and stabilize the water quality and antibiotics to treat illness. Aside from the potential threats to human health, another issue with these approaches appears to be that they may actually make the ponds more susceptible to infection, according to some scientists.

None of this is good for the shrimp or consumers.

Market impact

The Global Aquaculture Alliance estimates EMS causes $1 billion in losses annually. This explains why shrimp farmers are willing to do most anything to bring “healthy” shrimp to market … including using antibiotics the US FDA deems carcinogenic.

Here are some problems with this food system:

90% of the seafood eaten in the U.S. is imported;
50% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is farm raised;
Only 5% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is farm raised domestically;
90% of the world’s shrimp exports come from Asia and India;
55% of global shrimp production is aquaculture;
The U.S. is far more strict about safe aquaculture practices than most of the world;
The FDA is understaffed for inspectors, particularly those inspecting incoming seafood.

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization 2014 Status of the Stocks

This all means that most of the farmed shrimp consumed in this country was farm-raised in Asia, where there is a greater chance that it was treated with chemicals deemed unsafe to consume by the FDA. And there aren’t enough inspectors checking all of the imports.

How could this situation get much worse? If the latest trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is approved in Congress, the few inspectors checking U.S. imports may have their hands tied. The pact allows signatories like Thailand, Viet Nam and yes, Malaysia to sue the U.S. claiming that applying more strict U.S. health codes to imported seafood constitutes unfair trade practices. The result could be sanctions, fines and an open door to products tainted with carcinogenic substances.

Get smart

In the classroom the message always comes back to awareness. I encourage students to question where their seafood comes from. I considered it a moral victory a few months ago when a 6^th grader told the class she stopped her mom from ordering shrimp because it was from Thailand.

It’s that kind of awareness that helps students, their parents and anyone else understand that shrimp coming from Asia, or anywhere outside the U.S. is a good thing to avoid.

So you may want to pause before ordering the shrimp cocktail. Try to find the country of origin. If the shrimp isn’t from the U.S., you may want to consider another option. Because when the FDA sends up a red flag like this, it’s a good idea to take note.

Photo credits in order: Eco News Network, Food Safety News, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

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NOAA Opens Door to Aquaculture in the Gulf of…

January 16, 2016October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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Federal regulators yesterday announced the country’s first regionally approved aquaculture management program in the Gulf of Mexico. The NOAA “final rule” essentially clears the way for private entities to begin fish and shellfish farming in U.S. federal waters (exclusive economic zone). According to the announcement, those operations must follow the fishery management plan established by the Gulf Coast Fishery Management Council. Read more “NOAA Opens Door to Aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico” →

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FDA Rubber Stamps Genetically Modified “Frankenfish”

November 23, 2015October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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You may well have heard last week the FDA cleared the path for genetically modified salmon to hit the market after a protracted five-year review. It was a landmark decision that could have long-lasting implications for other genetically engineered (GE) products such as livestock (pigs, cattle, chickens) as well as reinforcing industry opposition to labeling such products (as in produce).

In a nutshell, the FDA determined the AquAdvantage salmon created by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty is safe to eat, and does not require specific labeling to identify that the fish has been genetically modified.

The AquAdvantage salmon are grown from eggs developed in Prince Edward Island and raised in land-based pens in Panama. The industry selling point for GE salmon is that it grows twice as fast on about a quarter of the feed that traditionally farmed salmon require. So some advocates point to AquAdvantage as a more environmentally friendly method of aquaculture that could meet the huge demand for salmon without raping wild populations.

Sadly, this decision sets a very bad precedent that could really confuse consumers, not to mention raising all kinds of scary questions about what happens when we eat food that has been injected with growth hormones.

Let’s take a look at some of the more pressing concerns:

Hormone use – The fish are developed with a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon and more genetic material from an ocean pout that help the salmon grow to market weight in less than 20 months, while traditional farming requires up to 36 months. While the FDA says this hormone is safe for the fish and for humans, there really hasn’t been enough detailed study about the long-term health effects on humans who ingest this kind of hormone.
No labeling – If it’s safe for consumers, why not label the product? It’s a simple question that has been raised about GE produce. Short of a credible answer, we’re left to suspect that there’s something AquaBounty or Monsanto don’t want us to know. The FDA says it can only compel GE manufacturers to claim the product has been genetically altered “… if there is a material difference – such as a different nutritional profile – between the GE product and its non-GE counterpart.” So what part of injecting a hormone combining material from two vastly different species to create a third isn’t “a material difference?”
FDA regulation: So this is interesting. The FDA wants to regulate GE salmon under the same framework as it regulates veterinary drugs because of the hormone involvement. The FDA says the hormone “meets the definition of a drug.” This suggests the FDA doesn’t have an effective framework for adequately reviewing and regulating GEsalmon. To wit, the FDA seems to be applying antiquated ideological governance to a very modern, technical challenge.
Geography: I can’t put my finger on it, but something seems strange about a Mass. company using eggs developed in Canada to “create” fish to be raised in Panama. Smacks a little too much like “Blade Runner” to me.

From a practical standpoint, the labeling issue is almost hypocritical. If food manufacturers are required to tell how much sugar, salt and fat grams go into a box of cereal, why shouldn’t salmon farmers have to tell the truth about genetically engineering the fish? If it’s about a potential stigma image, then create a better, more believable narrative, or just don’t genetically engineer the fish. Trying to mask it just raises more suspicion. The FDA’s one consolation to those clamoring for GE labeling? Voluntary labeling.

Yeah, that’s likely to happen.

I admit I’ve evolved a bit in my thinking on finfish aquaculture. I still have many questions and several concerns. But some operations using closed, re-circulating systems that minimize environmental and ecosystem impact and use more plant-based feed could meet a need. Any operation certified as having outright banned hormones or antibiotics and having eliminated the problem of farmed fish escapes is better than GE.

It will be at least two years before Frankenfish hits markets. And even then, it will likely be only a small fraction of globally available farmed salmon as AquaBounty’s infrastructure is still small. Whole Foods, Trade Joes, Safeway and Kroger have all pledged to not sell the fish. The Center for Food Safety has said it will sue the FDA over this decision.

Polls in the last five years by NPR and New York Times suggest overwhelming majorities of the public would not eat GE salmon.

Count me as one in those numbers. I fear this will open a door we shouldn’t open now, and once we step through, there won’t be any turning back.

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Collaborative Management Key to Forage Fishery Success

February 18, 2015October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

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What is a forage fish? What is its intrinsic value? How should we manage these populations given the significant ecosystem, economic and social importance of the fishery? These questions are particularly relevant considering the fishery accounts for anywhere between a quarter and a third of the global seafood harvest. Those are some of the questions discussed during a very fluid, informative session at the 2015 SeaWeb Seafood Summit.