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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   
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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Original Submission

• Re:...An orthogonal solutionRe:...An orthogonal solution (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:22AM (1 child)

  by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:22AM (#1378053) Homepage

  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.

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  And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.

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• Re:...An orthogonal solution(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:48PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2024, @04:48PM (#1378142)

  So... eat... more dolphins?

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