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posted by martyb on Sunday May 31 2015, @05:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the next-up:-flatulent-fish-feed dept.

Biotechnology firm Calysta has developed fish feed made from Methylococcus capsulatus and other bacteria:

Dr Shaw proposes to take advantage of the rock-bottom price of methane, a consequence of the spread of natural-gas fracking, to breed Methylococci en masse as a substitute for the fish-meal such farmers now feed to their charges.

The idea of using methanotrophs as fish food was invented by Statoil, a Norwegian oil and gas company. Calysta bought the technology in 2014, and has been refining it since then. Crucially, from a business point of view, the EU and Norway have already approved the use of Methylococcus-based fish food. Though America has yet to follow suit, this means there is a large available market for the stuff.

[...] The internal geometry of the reactors in which they live is designed to keep them in constant contact with enough methane to grow, enough air to respire and enough ammonia to provide the nitrogen which, along with the carbon and hydrogen in the methane, is a fundamental building block of the amino acids from which proteins are made. Nor are the Methylococci alone. The reactors actually contain a mini ecosystem that includes other species of bacteria, known as heterotrophs, which mop up metabolic products that would otherwise slow Methylococcus's growth. These products are mostly the result of Methylococcus consuming things other than methane (ethane, propane and so on) that are minor components of raw natural gas. Adding heterotrophs to the mix means Calysta can be less fussy about exactly which sources of natural gas it uses to feed its bugs.

At the moment, the world produces about 5m tonnes of fish-meal a year, a number that has been constant for four decades and is limited by the size of the Earth's fisheries. Demand, however, is growing at 6-8% a year, putting pressure on prices. This has led some fish farmers to adopt soya-based substitutes. These, though, can inflame the fishes' guts. That, Dr Shaw says, is not a problem with Calysta's product.

Dr Shaw seems confident Calysta's system, which should turn out more than 8,000 tonnes of bacterial fish food a year per reactor, can do so at a cost well below the $2,000 a tonne at which fish-meal now sells—and that it will be available commercially by 2018. If this comes to pass, not only will it help fish farmers, but it may also relieve pressure on wild fish stocks in the world's oceans.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @07:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @07:56PM (#190477)

    Every time someone mentions the limits on food production, economists and others trot out how Malthus was wrong, implying that every prediction on food production will always be wrong. In fact, food production increases have often been the result of using non-renewable sources of feed or, in particular, fertilizer. The guano craze in the nineteenth century wiped out many islands' supply of guano in short order. Fish as fertilizer has resulted in overfishing of some stocks (e.g. anchovies and similar fish off the Pacific coast of South America). We now rely heavily on petroleum-based fertilizers and now natural gas is proposed for feeding farmed fish.

    Meanwhile, many farming areas (US and Australia are obvious examples) are farming beyond their sustainable use of water. The central US water table has been permanently drawn down and will not recover without drastic action - like no more food production for a long time.

    There are limits to how much food we can produce. We just keep deferring the inevitable with non-renewable options. Malthus will eventually win out.

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