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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
It has been claimed that fish farming is a sustainable source of food that will help us feed the growing global human population while protecting wild fish populations – but this isn’t true.
“Fish farming is not a substitute for catching wild fish out of the ocean,” says Matthew Hayek at New York University. “In fact, it relies on catching wild fish out of the ocean.”
Hayek and his colleagues have shown that the amount of wild fish killed in order to feed farmed fish is between 27 and 307 per cent higher than previous estimates.
Farmed carnivorous fish eat multiple times more weight in wild fish caught from the ocean than is obtained by farming them, says Hayek. For instance, producing a kilogram of salmon may require 4 or 5 kilograms of wild fish.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Monday October 21 2024, @08:02PM (4 children)
Large scale fishing is surprisingly selective, but there's still a bunch of by-catch. These are off-target species pulled in by the nets or longlines that are discarded. These fish are usually dead, and the boats just chuck them back into the ocean. I'd be curious how it would affect the market if some clever person created a market for bycatch to turn them into fish meal for feed in aquaculture.
There is a risk of the cobra problem here, where this could lead to an increase in bycatch. You'd have to find some way to disincentivize that.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2024, @01:11AM (1 child)
A shrimp trawler might be only licensed (regulations, quotas, etc) to catch shrimp and only have equipment to process and store shrimp. So they catch 21 kg of stuff, throw 20kg away to die, and keep the 1kg of shrimp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bycatch#Shrimp_trawling [wikipedia.org]
Then another boat that's catching skipjack tuna, might only have licenses and equipment to process and can tuna, so they catch 7 kg of stuff, throw 1kg away to dieand keep 6kg of skipjack tuna.
And if you have paid for a quota to catch cod, being law abiding you don't c̶a̶t̶c̶h̶keep more than your quota of cod but whose counting how much non-cod you throw away dead?
Repeat till the oceans are empty.
In contrast farmed fish are less fussy about the fish they eat. So fishing for fish feed doesn't have to have as much bycatch.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 22 2024, @03:36PM
Shrimp trawlers were exactly what I was thinking about, but I didn't want to muddy the suggestion with specifics. If "Aquaculture requires too much fish protein as inputs" is a problem, "Hey, let's use the millions of tons of fish protein we throw away" seems like a fairly obvious solution.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:22AM (1 child)
I expect the real result is other aquatic species following the boats, looking for that free lunch they don't have to spend energy to catch, so for them it's a net benefit. Sharks and dolphins are known to do this; I'd guess a lot of less-obvious species do as well.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:48PM
So... eat... more dolphins?