Last month a report published by IPSO and a number of other organizations made some scary predictions on the fate of our oceans. Chief among these, the report speculated mass extinctions in marine life as early as 2020, particularly among the highest commercially-fished species like salmon and Tilapia. In addition, many economies and the international food chain, which depends significantly upon fishing and related industries, could be significantly disrupted. Appropriately named for their timeliness, TIME magazine recently ran a story about the validity of "aquaculture", or seafood farming, in alleviating stress on our oceans and our food supply. It's findings are positive, as usual, but not entirely realistic either.

     Aquaculture has been a growing industry since the unsustainability of our fishing industry came to public attention...just not in the U.S. China, in fact, is the largest aquaculture nation in the world, and exports enormous amounts of farmed fish to markets all over the world. As aquaculture is still a relatively small industry its product is still relatively expensive. However, many activists for sustainable food production hope that as traditional wild fisheries find it harder to meet the demand with dwindling numbers of fish in the oceans, more companies will adopt aquaculture and the prices will decrease. This is particularly true of fisheries in the U.S., where we import 84% of all of the seafood sold in this country. A greater emphasis on aquaculture here could improve economic recovery, make the food system safer, and lower the rising cost of seafood.

    First, the benefits of aquaculture. Other than the obvious economic payoff, raising fish is a more efficient use of money-to-meat production than any other farming/ranching venture. Fish generally put on, according to TIME, protein from feed at a rate of 30% compared to that of cattle, who only put it on at a rate of 5%. In addition, many types of fish are specially adapted to work within the confines of a farm with little noticeable side-effects. Also, and this goes to rationale, but the global demand for seafood has risen almost 100% in the last forty years, and with the recent discoveries of the health-benefits of many varieties of seafood, that demand will not shrink. However, many of the species in the ocean are over fished to the brink. By some estimates, salmon populations in the world's oceans have been depleted by 90%.

     As someone that has grown up in the Midwest, I'm keenly aware of animal and ethics abuses that are inherent whenever live-animal food production becomes commercialized. Driving by corporate cattle yards full-to bursting with livestock and manure, and chicken houses longer than a football field, one definitely feels pity for the animals that are forced to live in those conditions. Aquaculture farms may get slightly less lenience since we tend to feel less empathy toward fish in general, but the risk of abuses are nonetheless significant. I imagine tanks of water full to brimming with fish that simply flop around swallowed food pellets until it can be butchered.

     However, advocates believe that greener versions of aquaculture are easily adapted from more traditional fish farms. One, that attempts to mimic an underwater ecosystem. It begins with a large saline tank that includes a number of segregated netted areas. The first and largest contains several non-competitive species of commercial fish. The second, beneath the first, contains crustaceans and other bottom feeders that will feed from the fish waste and prevent the contamination of the tank. The third, which is a floating panel in which seaweed and other aquatic plant life grows, will further filter the water and, eventually, provide feed for the fish in the first net. Incredible how only 4,000 years after the agricultural revolution do we see the benefit in letting natural cycles do the work for us.

     Aquaculture will continue to grow to meet global demand as marine life becomes more scarce, and should we refuse to do anything about the wild fishing that persists around the world, including in our country, we may face mass extinctions of commercialized fish that would do one of two things: either put aquaculture into a realm of commercial success they can't dream of, having the only surviving remnants of the species to eat, or it will make it impossible for fish farms to exist without being able to replenish their stocks. In any case, our children or our children's children may find salmon, Tilapia, and other varieties of salt-water fish an expensive delicacy in the near future.