American assessment of offshore fish farming

Last July, I received from a pre-publication copy of a 263pp book from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) entitled: 'Offshore Aquaculture In the United States: Economic Considerations, Implications & Opportunities'. (The electronic version of this book is downloadable at http://aquaculture.noaa.gov).

A study group of 10 authors, all experts in natural and marine resources economics and aquaculture business, was commissioned by NOAA to address key economic issues related to offshore fish farming. The group’s terms of reference comprised an analysis of the present and future status of offshore marine farming, its economic needs, costs and benefits to the nation, as well as its interaction with domestic capture fisheries, international markets and global trends.

The 12-chapter book is a product of the notion that “the US stands at a critical juncture in the development and implementation of marine aquaculture” outlined in last year’s NOAA 10 Year Plan for Marine Aquaculture.

This book would serve NOAA in its preparation of ‘a comprehensive, environmentally sound permitting and regulatory program for marine aquaculture’, at a time when the US Congress is still discussing the 2005 proposal for national legislation for marine fish farming.

As a movement in the right direction, it has come none too early. So far, development of marine fish farming in the USA is lagging behind almost elsewhere in the world. Only 7.2% of the fish consumed there comes from farming, while marine farming supplies only 1.5% of the total demand. This compares badly with the rest of the world, because during the last 30 years fish farming has expanded so much that presently it supplies close to half of the fish for human consumption. According to FAO, this global trend is going to continue, in view of it’s estimate that total finfish and shellfish supply must grow by 40m mt more to satisfy worldwide consumption. Thus, the USA finds itself importing 80% of its seafood, exporting half of its wild catch, with its per-capita consumption hardly rising and, if any, only of farmed fish.

According to this study, development of domestic fish farming will benefit many branches of the economy and boost technology improvements and availability of vegetable feeds replacing fishmeal. As far as the offshore aquaculture is concerned, while its starting phase would be modest, targeting at ‘niche markets’, and it will take it some 25 years to develop, its feasibility will improve with the projected increase of demand and fish prices. While, on one hand, it may press down the prices of wild fish of the same species as those farmed, it should create jobs for displaced fishermen, especially in all marine services involved.

Altogether, the authors of this financial-economic study agree that there are conditions for a profitable future for American offshore fish farming. One of them, following a rather sophisticated economic model of a hypothetical offshore fish farm, draws a “sensational” conclusion saying that "the fish farm is economically viable if the price per pound exceeds the total cost per pound’ including the cost per pound of the investment…"(Hear, hear!) This, provided, says another author, that the offshore farmed fish fetches more than $2/kg, feed cost is less than $1/kg, and the feed conversion ratio is less than 2.

In my opinion, maybe, the authors followed a bit too strictly their commissioned terms of reference. Marine aquaculture has been facing a lot of problems that are not sufficiently dealt with in this book, and which must be solved or a way must be found to live with, otherwise the financial-economical models may lose their validity, some in local-regional, other in national terms.

Both foreign and domestic fish farming compete with capture fisheries, though the study lists several factors that would determine the degree of the effect of such competition. One problem involved is that feeding farmed fish requires catching wild forage fish. Raising one kilogram of a piscivorous fish requires fishmeal made of 3-4kg of wild fish that must come from the limited resources of 'industrial' fish shared with wild piscivores. But the study says that feeding farmed fish with forage fishes or their product is more efficient that leaving them in the sea for the wild piscivores, which spend much more energy on feeding themselves.

I don’t think that the study adequately discussed environmental impacts on coastal ecosystems and capture fisheries, and on the socio-cultural fabric of fishing communities and the related political pressures. According to some reports from the Atlantic, each year around two million farmed fish escape from cages and may carry parasites and diseases to wild populations. Some worry also of their interbreeding with wild stocks of the same and related species. Residual feed and bio-products cause increased turbidity and, over shallow bottom, desertification in the farms’ surroundings. All those problems lead to pressure of environmental groups, tourist industry, and fishing interests and of the ensuing restrictions and regulation.

On the other hand, offshore cage culture would be comparatively little damaging to the environment, in particular, if certain rules are followed. In any case, it would produce a little fraction of the pollution poured into the sea by the oil-extracting and processing and other industries and from farming and municipal effluents.

Promoters of offshore farming must recognise, however, that if a massive fish farming industry is going to be developed in US waters, it will have to comply with the high environmental standards, such as, for example, are currently in place in California. Any attempt to weaken the standards, which they think should come as a model for the federal regulation, will encounter resistance of the environmental and fishing groups. And some of us may remember how the issue of dolphins had contributed to the collapse of the California tuna fishery.

Altogether, this is an important study, one only should hope that those who’d use its models and conclusions would remember that there is more to fish farming than cost-benefits estimates.