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Why Farming Fish Is More Unsustainable Than Catching Them In The Wild

posted by mrpg on Monday October 21 2024, @11:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the so-long... dept.

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.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 21 2024, @11:37PM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 21 2024, @11:37PM (#1378028) Journal

    In theory, with modest effort, an aquaculture farmer could grow his fish in perfectly ideal water temp and ideal water quality, so the fish don't have to either suffer or move, pretty much ever.

    Fish in continual movement have better quality and health BTW. When I toured a fish hatchery [tripadvisor.com] way back when, water was continually flowing through the tanks.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:15PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:15PM (#1378128)

    I think in specific you are probably correct although in general I still like my idea of improving locations. It could be as simple as multiple redundant feeder stations convincing the fish to always swim to the next feeding area, which coincidentally ALSO happens to be an ideal fish growth environment. Rather than they just eat where they want or where its convenient for humans they could always be eating where its best to live.