essay about fish farming

Essay on Fish Farming

Students are often asked to write an essay on Fish Farming in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Fish Farming

What is fish farming.

Fish farming is like growing plants, but with fish instead. People create special ponds or tanks where fish can live and grow. These farms provide a steady supply of fish to eat without having to catch them in the wild.

Types of Fish Farms

There are different kinds of fish farms. Some are big and some are small. They can be indoors or outdoors. The fish might live in fresh water or salt water, depending on the type of fish being raised.

Benefits of Fish Farming

Fish farming helps protect wild fish. It can also give us more fish to eat. Farmers make sure the fish are healthy and have enough food, which helps them grow faster.

Challenges in Fish Farming

But fish farming can be hard. Sometimes, the fish get sick, and the water can get dirty. Farmers must work to keep the fish safe and clean up the water to prevent problems.

250 Words Essay on Fish Farming

Fish farming is the process of raising fish in tanks or enclosures, usually for food. This method is also known as aquaculture. It is like having a fish version of a chicken farm where fish are cared for until they are big enough to be eaten or sold.

Why Do We Farm Fish?

The main reason we farm fish is to produce food. With the world’s growing population, wild fish can’t meet everyone’s needs. Farming fish helps to prevent overfishing, which means catching too many fish from the sea and harming the balance of ocean life.

There are different kinds of fish farms. Some are in big tanks on land, while others are in large nets in the ocean or lakes. The kind of farm used often depends on the type of fish being raised.

Fish farming can be good for the environment if done right. It can use less water than other types of farming, and when farmers feed fish special food, it can help them grow faster and healthier. This makes fish farming an efficient way to produce protein for people to eat.

Fish farming also faces challenges. Sometimes, fish get sick, and if they are all in one place, the illness can spread quickly. Also, waste from the fish can pollute the water. Farmers need to work carefully to keep the fish healthy and the water clean.

500 Words Essay on Fish Farming

Fish farming is like setting up a home for fish away from rivers, lakes, or the ocean. It’s a way to grow fish for us to eat or to restock places where fish numbers are low. Just like people farm plants and land animals, fish farming takes care of fish from when they are tiny until they are big enough to be harvested or released.

The Place for Fish to Live

To start a fish farm, you need a good place for the fish to live. This can be a pond, a tank, or a cage in a bigger body of water. The goal is to give the fish a clean, safe environment where they can grow strong and healthy. The water needs to be just right, not too warm or too cold, and clean so the fish can breathe and stay healthy.

Feeding the Fish

Why fish farming is important.

Fish farming helps in many ways. First, it gives us a steady supply of fish without taking too many from the wild. This means there are enough fish left in rivers and oceans for the ecosystem to stay balanced. Second, it can help people make a living. Fish farmers can sell their fish to markets and stores, earning money to support their families.

Even though fish farming is useful, it’s not without problems. Sometimes, the fish might get sick, and if that happens, it can spread quickly through the whole farm. Also, if the water gets dirty, it can hurt the fish and even the environment around the farm. Fish farmers need to work hard to keep the fish and the water healthy.

How Fish Farming Helps the Environment

In the end, fish farming is a smart way to make sure we have enough fish for everyone to eat, without taking too many from the wild. It’s a job that needs careful work and attention to keep the fish and the environment happy and healthy. With the right care, fish farming can be a great solution for feeding people and keeping our water friends in good shape.

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The Pros and Cons of Fish Farming

• Anita Wolff

Fish farming—aquaculture—has been practiced for hundreds of years, from Pre-Columbian fish traps in the Amazon basin to carp ponds on ancient Chinese farms. Today aquaculture produces a wide variety of both freshwater and saltwater fin fish, crustaceans, and mollusks: farmed species include salmon, shrimp, catfish, carp, Arctic char, trout, tilapia, eels, tuna, crabs, crayfish, mussels, oysters, and aquatic plants such as seaweed. Some species spend their entire lives on the farm, while others are captured and raised to maturity there. As the stocks of wild fish began to diminish, and even before the catastrophic decline of such species as cod, sea bass, and red snapper, fish farming was seen as a way to satisfy the world’s growing appetite for healthful fish and at the same time a means of sparing wild fish populations and allowing their numbers to rebound. Today, over 70 percent of world fish stocks are fully exploited or are already overfished. Aquaculture was also seen as a way to provide a living for thousands of farmers and fishermen who had seen their usual crops lose value and their catches disappear. And it was hoped that fish farming would help provide the protein needs of Third World populations through locally produced products. Fish farms could be located not only along coastal areas but near inland rivers and lakes, wherever water could be supplied. The fish farms’ “fields” could be large tanks and artificial ponds as well as enclosures in natural settings such as rivers, lakes, seacoasts, or the open ocean. Today the $78 billion aquaculture industry supplies nearly 40% of the seafood we eat and is growing faster than any other agricultural sector. China is the world’s leading supplier; in 2006 it produced about 115 billion pounds of seafood, which is shipped worldwide but mostly consumed by the Chinese themselves. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, “Global fisheries exports now earn more revenue than any other traded food commodity, including rice, cocoa or coffee.”

Growing concerns

Many of the concerns surrounding fish farming arise from the crowding together of thousands of fish in their artificial environment. Waste products, including feces, uneaten food, and dead fish, are flushed (often untreated) into the surrounding waters where they add to the contamination of the water supply. Also in this effluent are pesticides and veterinary drugs that have been used in an effort to treat the pests and diseases that afflict fish in these concentrated numbers. Such chemicals affect the entire aquatic ecosystem. In many areas, notably China, waters are already heavily polluted from sewage, industry, and agricultural runoff. There are serious questions about the advisability of eating fish raised in such environments. Consumers in the U.S., who had been advised to eat fish several times a week for the health benefits, were dismayed to learn that highly recommended farmed salmon was found to be tainted with mercury and PCB’s.

Fish in captivity must be fed. Some species are herbivores or omnivores; species like shrimp and salmon are carnivorous and must be fed on other fish. According to Time magazine, “It takes a lot of input, in the form of other, lesser fish—also known as ‘reduction’ or ‘trash’ fish—to produce the kind of fish we prefer to eat directly. To create 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) of high-protein fishmeal, which is fed to farmed fish (along with fish oil, which also comes from other fish), it takes 4.5 kg (10 lbs.) of smaller pelagic, or open-ocean, fish.” In an article on bluefin tuna farming published in the San Francisco Chronicle , a seafood wholesaler estimated that it takes 26 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of bluefin tuna; the feed consists of squid, blue mackerel, and sand eel. A staggering 37% of all global seafood is now ground into feed, up from 7.7% in 1948, according to recent research from the UBC Fisheries Centre. Some goes to fish farms and some feeds pigs and poultry. Both are examples of what Francis Moore Lappe called “reverse protein factories,” where the resources far outweigh the product.

Environmental impact

Coastal areas worldwide have seen habitat and ecosystem alterations in order to accommodate fish farms. Mangrove forests–complex ecosystems that lined great stretches of the coasts of Thailand, Vietnam, and China, as well as those of other countries—have been destroyed to create shrimp and fish farms (as well as other businesses). These swamps helped buffer the the effects of hurricanes, cyclones, and tsunamis; it is believed that the loss of coastal wetlands along the Mississippi Delta contributed to the immense devastation from Hurricane Katrina. Other agricultural areas were also affected. The World Resources Institute estimates that “nearly half the land now used for shrimp ponds in Thailand was formerly used for rice paddies; in addition, water diversion for shrimp ponds has lowered groundwater levels noticeably in some coastal areas.”

Pests such as sea lice (tiny crustaceans that prey on fish) proliferate in fish farms and spread out to afflict wild fish. Sea lice are especially damaging to salmon, sometimes eating away the flesh of their heads down to the bone. A fish farm on Loch Ewe on the Western Scottish coast is blamed for damaging Scotland’s wild salmon stocks. Viral, fungal, and bacterial diseases that arise in fish farms have spread to native fish populations. Individual fish, often of non-native species, escape from fish farms to compete with native fish for food and habitat resources.

Agencies worldwide have called for better management of fish farms, strict enforcement of regulations to protect consumers, more research on sustainable practices, and sharing of information on sound aquacultural practices. International, regional, and local agencies are all involved in the effort, as are agencies concerned with animal welfare, the environment, and food resource management. Responsible, sustainable fish farming is an achievable goal and one that will become an increasingly important part of stewardship of the Earth’s water resources.

To Learn More

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aquaculture Program
• A comprehensive look at economic, environmental, and practical aspects of aquaculture at AquaSol, Inc
• The Pew Charitable Trust’s report on Sustainable Marine Aquaculture
• Food and Water Watch’s report on fish farming

How Can I Help?

• Be aware of the origin of the fish you eat; check labels or ask your fishmonger
• Consult the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch list before buying seafood or ordering at a restaurant

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Fish farming techniques: current situation and trends.

1. Introduction

2. considerations about world fish farming, 3. recirculation system in fish farming, 4. importance of live food in aquaculture, 5. biology and cultivation of the main species cultivated in marine and coastal fish farming, 5.1. cobia, rachycentron canadum, 5.1.1. cobia economic impact, 5.1.2. cobia farming, 5.1.3. cobia reproduction, 5.1.4. cobia farming problems, 5.1.5. technological obstacles in the cultivation of cobia, 5.2. the asian sea bass, lates calcarifer, 5.2.1. asian sea bass economic impact, 5.2.2. asian sea bass farming, asian sea bass feed needs, 5.2.3. asian sea bass reproduction, 5.2.4. asian sea bass farming problems, 5.2.5. technological obstacles in the cultivation of asian bass, l. calcarifer, 5.3. the milkfish, chanos chanos, 5.3.1. the milkfish economic impact, 5.3.2. the milkfish farming, the milkfish feed needs, 5.3.3. the milkfish reproduction, 5.3.4. the milkfish farming problems, 5.3.5. technological obstacles in the cultivation of milkfish, c. chanos, 5.4. the atlantic salmon, salmo salar, 5.4.1. atlantic salmon economic impact, 5.4.2. atlantic salmon farming, atlantic salmon feed, 5.4.3. atlantic salmon reproduction, 5.4.4. atlantic salmon farming problems, 5.4.5. technological obstacles in the cultivation of atlantic salmon, s. salar, 5.5. the golden pompano, trachinotus blochii, 5.5.1. the golden pompano economic impact, 5.5.2. the golden pompano farming, the golden pompano feed needs, 5.5.3. the golden pompano reproduction, 5.5.4. the golden pompano farming problems, 5.5.5. technological obstacles and future perspectives in the cultivation of golden pompano, t. blochii, 5.6. other important species, 5.6.1. tilapia culture, 5.6.2. catfish culture, 5.6.3. carp culture, 6. sustainability in marine and coastal fish farming, 6.1. classical methods to have fish farming more sustainable, 6.2. technological evolution in fish farming, 6.3. feed and nutrition in fish farming, 6.4. biosecurity in fish farming, 6.5. fish genetics on farming, 6.6. dangers nowadays in fish farming, 7. conclusions and future perspectives on the main species cultivated in marine and coastal fish farming, 7.2. asian sea bass, 7.3. milkfish, 7.4. atlantic salmon, 7.5. the golden pompano, 7.6. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Araujo, G.S.; Silva, J.W.A.d.; Cotas, J.; Pereira, L. Fish Farming Techniques: Current Situation and Trends. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022 , 10 , 1598. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10111598

Araujo GS, Silva JWAd, Cotas J, Pereira L. Fish Farming Techniques: Current Situation and Trends. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering . 2022; 10(11):1598. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10111598

Araujo, Glacio Souza, José William Alves da Silva, João Cotas, and Leonel Pereira. 2022. "Fish Farming Techniques: Current Situation and Trends" Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 10, no. 11: 1598. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10111598

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Fish farming for the future

At least half of our seafood comes from fish farming or ‘aquaculture.’ Fish farming is an incredibly diverse industry. It can occur in open water, semi-contained or contained systems, and involve countless different species and rearing methods. Different types of fish farming also cause a wide range and intensity of environmental impacts.

Aquaculture will soon supply the majority of seafood for human consumption. Creating a sustainable fish farming industry for the future will require that we minimize its use of wild fish stocks, pollution, disease, farmed fish escapes and habitat damage.

Use of Marine Resources
 Most of the fish that we love to eat are carnivores. They require great amounts of wild fish as feed in order to rapidly grow to a large enough size for human consumption. Unfortunately, some of the most popular farmed species require anywhere from 3-15 kilograms of wild fish to grow just 1 kilogram.
There are some species such as scallops and tilapia that use little to no wild fish in their feed. There is also ongoing research to generate alternative diets that include plant-based materials.

Pollution and Disease Open net-cage aquaculture provides no barrier between the farmed fish and their surrounding environment. This means that enormous amounts of fish feed, feces and chemicals are released in to the environment every day, often causing inhabitable conditions for other species. In B.C. alone, salmon farms produce the same amount of waste as a city of half a million people.
Fish farms can also create the perfect environment for disease transmission. In open net-cages, these diseases can then easily spread to wild fish, wreaking havoc on local populations.

Escapes 
Farmed fish that escape in to the wild pose a serious risk to wild species. They can spread disease, create unnatural competition and introduce alien species in to an ecosystem. There is also the possibility of interbreeding, forever altering the genetic pool of a population. The number of escapes, and their ecological ramifications, can be hard to track. However, there are several documented cases of thousands of fish escaping at once.

Habitat Damage 
Fish farms are often situated in or near sensitive coastal ecosystems, including estuaries, mangrove forests and coastal reefs. These ecosystems often provide a nursery for many different species of juvenile marine life, who are particularly susceptible to environmental stresses. These ecosystems can be destroyed to make way for fish farms, or irreparably damaged by the pollution and diseases they can potentially generate.

Management
 The aquaculture industry is experiencing a period of rapid expansion. It is important that government and regulatory bodies ensure that this industry is maintaining and enforcing environmental standards. This includes protecting habitat, mitigating pollution and decreasing the use of wild fish feed. One of the best ways to regulate the fish farming industry is through independent certification. There are currently several different aquaculture certification systems in place, but a universally-credible, transparent certification system does not yet exist.

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Fish Farming and the Boundary of Sustainability: How Aquaculture Tests Nature’s Resources

Courtney Carroll (WR 150, Paper 3)

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The advent of aquaculture has extended the industry of factory farming to earth’s marine and freshwater systems. It has greatly benefited the seafood business and has allowed consumers to have traditionally seasonal fish at any time of the year; however as the aquaculture industry rapidly grows from small scale to large scale, many question its sustainability. While the industry insists that fish farming takes the burden off wild fish stocks, other experts have suggested that the farms actually do more harm than help by increasing the spread of diseases, parasites such as sea lice, and astronomically increasing the level of pollution and waste in the wild ecosystems. In particular, the large scale production of carnivorous fish such as salmon has concerned many environmental groups because it requires much larger amounts of resources than producing other types of fish. Escaped salmon from farms can also adversely affect the genetic variability of wild populations, reducing their ecological resilience. The debate over the sustainability of aquaculture represents the conflict between America’s need to conserve and America’s need to control nature’s resources. Rising evidence suggests that fish farming may end up taxing the environment beyond its capacity if it does not become more ecologically mindful. The ultimate question of the debate remains how far society can push the boundary of sustainability and how far technology can extend the capacity of nature’s resources.

Technology optimists believe new innovations can resolve any possible hurdles that may come about with the development of aquaculture. Since 1970, seafood production in the aquaculture industry has increased at an annual rate of 8.8% (Morris et al. 2). As the world population approaches 8 billion, seafood producers have harnessed aquaculture in an effort to fill the gap between population growth and natural seafood production (Molyneaux 28–29). Farmed salmon production amounted to 817,000 tons in 2006 and increased 171 fold since 1980 (Morris et al. 2). While shrimp and oyster farms mainly grew out of developing countries, salmon farming grew out of countries with access to more sophisticated technology including the U.S., Canada, and Europe (Molyneaux 45). Initial assessments of fish farming concluded that all economies had an interest in developing aquaculture. For example, on June 2, 1976 in Kyoto, Japan, an FAO Technical Conference on Aquaculture examined and discussed types of aquaculture, the possible problems such as the risk of disease, and ultimately recommended the expansion of aquaculture, leading to huge investment in the rising industry (Molyneaux 30–31). To technology optimists, the potential rewards of aquaculture seemed infinite, but few stopped to consider possible repercussions to the ecosystem.

Some environmental concerns about aquaculture did surface as it began to develop, but any initial fears of ecological impacts did little to inhibit growth of the industry. In 1967 the United States Congress established the Commission on Marine Science, and in 1969 the commission released a report that called for more research on aquaculture. Despite the lack of research, the promise of jobs and food security outweighed any concerns about its effects on the environment, and development continued unabated (Molyneaux 45). In addition, the passage of the U.S. Aquaculture Act in 1980 also helped nurture the development of the aquaculture industry (Molyneaux 46). Fish farming has obvious benefits such as food security and jobs, but these obvious benefits obscure many of the potential problems that could arise in the future.

An industry such as aquaculture that does not make efforts to promote sustainability will inevitably run into problems, despite any short term benefits it may give to investors. Salmon farms especially merit concern because to produce predatory fish, companies need to “reduce fish” to produce fish, which essentially turns fish lower on the food chain, such as sardines or anchovies, into feed for farmed salmon (Halweil 5). This process requires a huge amount of resources compared to herbivorous fish, making the salmon industry more vulnerable if supplies become scarce and much more energy intensive. In addition, though the aquaculture business claims that its farms provide necessary food production for society’s growing populations, many estimates show that modern fish farming consumes more fish than it produces (Halweil 18). The question of whether aquaculture provides a sufficient food source for future generations means many companies will lead themselves to failure if they do not manage their resources responsibly.

Does aquaculture pose a risk to wild salmon? Supporters of the industry would argue that aquaculture takes excess burden off the wild stocks that might otherwise become dangerously depleted. Many agree that commercial fishing practices have severely reduced the populations of wild fish in North America’s oceans and freshwater habitats. Wild salmon have particularly felt the impact of commercial fishing in the Atlantic and Pacific waters. Aquaculture came about as a possible solution to the problem and would give wild salmon an opportunity to rebound from endangerment due to overfishing. It has been proven successful with other types of seafood such as catfish and tilapia; however, some have contested that serious problems associated with fish farming have put potentially much greater pressures on the wild populations of salmon (Claiborne 1).

According to a report which observed the recurrence of escaped farmed salmon in rivers in eastern North America, “A critical first step to assessing the risk that escaped farmed salmon might pose to wild salmon populations is to quantify the frequency with which farmed salmon enter wild salmon rivers and the frequency with which such escapes recur” (Morris et al. 2). This report provided a preliminary look into the effects of farmed salmon on wild salmon and demonstrated that farmed salmon have a significant prevalence in wild habitats. For example, their observations of rivers in the eastern United States and Canada showed that, “escaped salmon were reported in 54 rivers and bays in the region” (Morris et al. 14). Such escape events call for greater monitoring of farmed salmon production. Some areas have made more efforts to do this than others. For instance, “In Maine growers have implemented a Hazard Critical Control Point process to address the issue for sea cage sites and freshwater hatcheries” (Morris et al. 15). Keeping track of escape events and how many salmon find their way into wild habitats helps identify the risks posed by aquaculture and to what extent they affect the ecosystem.

As production in aquaculture exploded, disease became the defining issue that could impede or even kill its expansion. Infectious salmon anemia (ISA), which began to affect farmed salmon in Maine, became a serious problem and resulted in the destruction of 1.5 million fish (Jenkins 857). The aquaculture industry has not yet come up with a standard method to approach the problem of disease. “The apparent solution is to destroy all infected or potentially infected fish and let the pen sites lie fallow for a season or more, so that the virus, denied its host, will be flushed out by normal tides and dissipate” (Jenkins 857). The epidemic of ISA cost the aquaculture industry as much as $25 million in lost fish and left the fish growers struggling for control (Molyneaux 102). ISA spread through many pathways such as sea lice, gulls, and sloppy disposal practices (Molyneaux 104). Industry supporters spoke of the ISA outbreak as a natural disaster, but temporary workers hired to dispose of the infected fish placed blame on management practices, as one worker stated, “They knew this was coming but they still overstocked their pens” (Molyneaux 103). The negligence of the aquaculture industry to use more caution in managing its supplies could have led to its abrupt failure and should serve as a warning to fish growers that ignorance of proper resource management has high ecological and economical consequences.

Outbreaks of viruses such as ISA led to the rapid establishment of programs to eradicate them. As one technology optimist stated, “We’re looking at improving the immune systems of the fish. And labs are working on vaccines” (Molyneaux 107). Vaccines did help the industry gain control over many diseases that had hindered its development in the 1980s; however, vaccines can create other undesirable consequences (Molyneaux 104, 108). As one expert stated, “One thing people don’t talk about is how much protection the vaccine gives the transfer of disease” (Molyneaux 108). In the case of salmon farming, vaccines prevent the fish from showing symptoms but do not protect them from infection, which effectively hides the problem instead of curing it (Molyneaux 108). As stated in Paul Molyneaux’s book, “You could have salmon swimming and shedding the virus” (Molyneaux 108). This makes it extremely difficult to monitor how extensively disease impacts the populations of wild salmon and could slow down efforts to make aquaculture more sustainable.

Parasites known as sea lice have risen as another problem, but one that has had a greater impact on the wild salmon than the farmed salmon. Normally, the presence of sea lice does not present much of a threat to wild salmon, but each industrial salmon farm produces large numbers of sea lice which usually end up right in the middle of the migration routes of wild juveniles (“Salmon”). Each female lays hundreds of eggs, meaning billions of lice invade wild salmon habitat and infect the fish, making them vulnerable to disease. In addition, the lice that become attached to the fish can ultimately cause the host to starve to death because they become so large and take up too much nutrition from the host fish (“Salmon”). Aquaculture farms have managed this problem by using a drug known as SLICE, which acts as a nerve poison that kills the sea lice (“Salmon”). This effectively rids the farmed fish of the lice problem, but its benefits to the farmed salmon have not translated to the wild salmon (“Salmon”). Drugs such as SLICE represent the struggle of farmers to control nature’s variability and demonstrate the belief that we can use technology to control nature’s ecological processes.

Disease not only hurts the salmon but could also develop into a human health issue because many companies will send them to market as long as they do not show excessive symptoms (Molyneaux 108). Some studies have also found that farmed salmon contain ten times the levels of cancer causing PCBs than wild salmon, another major human health issue derived from aquaculture (“Salmon”). Preventing and controlling diseases will continue to cost salmon growers thousands of dollars a year, making disease a controlling factor of how rapidly aquaculture develops or how quickly it crashes. The attempt to control the threat of disease represents an assumption that we can utilize technology to control nature and overcome any obstacle. This stems from the anthropocentric belief that humans dominate nature and gives a license to society to exploit its resources without considering the harmful effects their activities might have. By not taking more careful consideration into their practices, the aquaculture industry also assumes that nature has the capacity to adapt to whatever negative effects they produce, whereas in reality they may fail to see that nature simply displaces those effects, as in the case of sea lice afflicting wild salmon. The industry will not openly acknowledge these implications that their practices have on larger ecosystems because such an admission would harm the industry economically. Ultimately, the complacence of society towards the environmental costs of its activities presents the biggest challenge facing conservation efforts because it prevents change from occurring.

Some other problems that wild salmon have inherited from farmed salmon include threats to biodiversity, degraded water quality, and habitat conversion. According to the aforementioned report on farmed salmon escapes, aquaculture can have a negative impact on the ecological fitness of wild salmon. “Results suggest that farmed salmon can exhibit lower genetic variability than wild salmon and that the introgression of farmed salmon genes into a wild population can be comparatively rapid” (Morris et al. 16). The escape of farmed salmon can threaten biodiversity because lower genetic variability makes a species less able to adapt to changing environmental circumstances. Furthermore, negative impacts on water could also threaten wild salmon. Industries like aquaculture demand a high amount of resources for a relatively small space, creating a situation in which the environment may degrade because of overexploitation. As one article on aquaculture stated, “Clearly, high densities of cages and high numbers of fish in cages could produce situations in which the assimilative capacity of water is exceeded by the demands of aquaculture” (Diana 6). All of these problems mean that resources have limits, and though the prospects of aquaculture seem boundless, the oceans only have so much to give. American society constantly tests these limits with the use of technological advances, signifying that control of our resources takes priority over conserving them.

Practices such as aquaculture and agriculture create a perceived certainty of food security and control of resources, but unchecked growth in industrial food production can lead to unforeseen consequences in the future that could potentially undermine that certainty. This uncertainty in the stability of nature’s resources stresses the need for a line between control and total ambiguity. An approach that aims to preserve the integrity of the ecosystem through more responsible treatment of the environment would justify our use of resources because such a policy would ensure a respectful relationship with nature. In the case of aquaculture, this means adopting more sustainable methods. For example, closed containment aquaculture has a much smaller impact on the environment because waste and effluents do not go into the ocean, and no escape events can occur, eliminating many problems associated with large scale marine aquaculture (“Salmon”). Also, an organic label has recently risen as a niche market in aquaculture and offers another option for sustainability that would reduce or eliminate the use of vaccines (Taylor 4). Polyculture, otherwise known as Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA), offers yet another example of a more sustainable seafood industry. This method effectively promotes sustainability because “nutrient losses from one species are nutritional inputs for another” (Reid 2). IMTA more closely resembles how a natural ecosystem operates; it makes environmental and economical sense because resources do not get wasted but get recycled in an endless loop.

America’s need to invest in an industry that promises to protect our food security sends a message about America’s attitude toward nature. It suggests a belief that we have a right to use technology to control nature and the power to control its resources at our discretion. Aquaculture shares many similarities as agriculture in this regard because both represent attempts to control nature’s resources for our needs. Agriculture attempts to control nature’s resources by taking charge of what type of crops grow in a certain place. The mass production of crops such as corn and wheat in the Midwest take advantage of nature’s resources for high profits, because of a high demand for items that include these products. These monocultures have a keen susceptibility to disease and pests because a lack of variety in genetics makes them ecologically vulnerable. Farmers fight for control with chemicals, pesticides, and genetically modified crops. Aquaculture will experience similar dilemmas as fish growers fight for control of the oceans with new vaccines and genetic engineering. Technology will play an important role in maintaining food security; however, if society emphasizes conservation over reliance on technology, this would eliminate a lot of the uncertainty that technology only seems to complicate. Practices such as IMTA stress conservation over technology because they rely on natural processes rather than new inventions or technological advances. The move to more sustainable practices in aquaculture means that our belief of control over nature will shift to a dynamic partnership with nature, a relationship that will ensure the survival and the success of both.

Bibliography

Claiborne, Ray. “Farming Fish.” The New York Times 12 Apr 2010. Web. 16 Apr 2010. .

Diana, James S. “Aquaculture Production and Biodiversity Conservation.” Bioscience 59.1 (2009): 27–38. Web.

Halweil, Brian. Worldwatch Report: Farming Fish for the Future . Washington D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 2008. Print.

Jenkins, David. “Atlantic Salmon, Endangered Species, and the Failure of Environmental Policies.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45.4 (2003): 843–72. Web.

Molyneaux, Paul. Swimming in Circles Aquaculture and the End of Wild Oceans . New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007. Print.

Morris, Matthew R. J., et al. “Prevalence and Recurrence of Escaped Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo Salar) in Eastern North American Rivers.” Canadian Journal of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences 65.12 (2008): 2807–26. Web.

Reid, G. K., et al. “A Review of the Biophysical Properties of Salmonid Faeces: Implications for Aquaculture Waste Dispersal Models and Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture.” Aquaculture Research 40.3 (2009): 257–73. Web.

“Salmon.” Eco Trip . Host David de Rothschild. CBS, NBC Universal, and Robert Redford. Sundance Channel. 9 June, 2009. Television.

Taylor, David A. “Aquaculture Navigates through Troubled Waters.” Environmental Health Perspectives 117.6 (2009): A252–5. Web.

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Sustainable Fish Farming: 5 Strategies to Get Aquaculture Growth Right

• aquaculture
• food security
• world resources report

This post is an installment of WRI’s blog series, “ Creating a Sustainable Food Future .” The series explores strategies to sustainably feed 9 billion people by 2050. All pieces are based on research being conducted for the forthcoming World Resources Report . Check out more posts in this series.

The world’s appetite for fish is steadily growing. Finfish and shellfish currently make up one-sixth of the animal protein people consume globally. As the global wild fish catch peaked in the 1990s, aquaculture—or fish farming—has grown rapidly to meet world fish demand, more than doubling production between 2000 and 2012. New research shows that aquaculture production will need to more than double again between now and 2050 to meet the demands of a growing population.

The question is: Can aquaculture grow sustainably?

WRI partnered with WorldFish, the World Bank, INRA, and Kasetsart University to explore this question. Our new paper, Improving Productivity and Environmental Performance of Aquaculture , examines aquaculture’s environmental footprint today and explores various scenarios of aquaculture growth to 2050. It uncovers several strategies that can lessen aquaculture’s environmental impacts while also ensuring that fish farming provides employment and nutritious food to millions more people.

Aquaculture’s Impacts: Encouraging Trends, but Challenges Remain

On average, farmed fish convert feed to edible food as efficiently as poultry, making them an attractive option for expanding the global animal protein supply. However, as with all forms of food production, aquaculture isn’t without its environmental impacts.

As aquaculture began to boom in the 1990s, several concerns emerged such as the clearing of mangroves to make way for shrimp farms in Asia and Latin America, increased use of fishmeal and fish oil made from wild marine fish, and the generation of water pollution and shrimp and fish diseases. The aquaculture industry has greatly improved performance over the past 20 years, producing more farmed fish per unit of land and water, lowering the share of fishmeal and fish oil in many aquaculture feeds, and largely stopping mangrove conversion.

However, doubling aquaculture production without further increasing the industry’s efficiency could lead to a doubling of environmental impacts. And unless the aquaculture industry is able to boost productivity, the limited availability of land, water, and feed may constrain its growth.

Getting Aquaculture Growth Right: 5 Approaches

Our report recommends five approaches to help get aquaculture growth right:

Invest in technological innovation and transfer. Aquaculture is a young industry—decades behind that of livestock farming. Improvements in breeding technology, disease control, feeds and nutrition, and low-impact production systems are interlinked areas where science can complement traditional knowledge to improve efficiency. These sorts of innovations—whether led by farmers, research institutions, companies, or governments—have been behind productivity gains in every part of the world. For example, in Vietnam, a breakthrough in catfish breeding around the year 2000—complemented by widespread adoption of high-quality pelleted feed—unlocked a boom in production growth and intensification. Vietnamese catfish production grew from 50,000 tons in 2000 to more than 1 million tons in 2010, even though the country’s total catfish pond area only doubled during that time.

Focus beyond the farm. Most aquaculture regulations and certification schemes focus at the individual farm level. But having many producers in the same area can lead to cumulative environmental impacts—such as water pollution or fish diseases—even if everyone is following the law. Spatial planning and zoning can ensure that aquaculture operations stay within the surrounding ecosystem’s carrying capacity and can also lessen conflicts over resource use. Norway’s zoning laws, for example, ensure that salmon producers are not overly concentrated in one area, reducing disease risk and helping mitigate environmental impacts.

Shift incentives to reward sustainability. A variety of public and private policies can give farmers incentives to practice more sustainable aquaculture. For example, Thailand’s government has provided shrimp farmers operating legally in aquaculture zones with access to free training, water supply, and wastewater treatment. The government has also provided low-interest loans and tax exemptions to small-scale farmers—helping them adopt improved technology that increased productivity, reducing pressure to clear new land.

Leverage the latest information technology. Advances in satellite and mapping technology, ecological modeling, open data, and connectivity mean that global-level monitoring and planning systems that encourage sustainable aquaculture development may now be possible. A platform integrating these technologies could help governments improve spatial planning and monitoring, help the industry plan for and demonstrate sustainability, and help civil society report success stories and hold industry and government accountable for wrongdoing.

Eat fish that are low on the food chain. Fish farming can ease pressure on marine ecosystems if farmed fish don’t need large amounts of wild fish in their diets. Consumers should therefore demand species that feed low on the food chain—“low-trophic” species such as tilapia, catfish, carp, and bivalve mollusks. In emerging economies, where consumption of low-trophic species is still dominant, emphasis should continue with these species even as billions of people enter the global middle class in coming decades. At the same time, because fish are a major source of nutrition for more than a billion poor people in the developing world, growing aquaculture to meet the food and nutritional needs of these consumers will be essential.

With the global wild fish catch stagnant and the human population increasing, aquaculture is here to stay. The world, therefore, needs to get its growth right—and ensure that fish farming contributes to a sustainable food future.

LEARN MORE: WRI’s most recent installment of the World Resources Report recommends five approaches to improve the productivity and environmental performance of aquaculture. Download the working paper here .

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• The future of fish farming is on land

New systems cut pollution and allow fish to be raised anywhere in the world

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T HE RUGGED , chilly coast of northern Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, is not usually thought of as prime agricultural land. But far down a dead-end road on the shores of Skjerstad Fjord sits Salten Smolt, one of the most advanced farms in the world. Rather than crops or cows, though, the firm produces fish. Inside its 7,000 square metre main building are tanks capable of producing 8m smolt—juvenile Atlantic salmon—every year.

Fish farming is the fastest-growing form of food production in the world. Seafood accounts for around 17% of the world’s protein intake (in some parts of Asia and Africa, the number is nearer 50%). The OECD , a rich-country club, reckons that, thanks to population growth and rising incomes, global consumption of fish will reach 180m tonnes by the end of the decade, up from 158m tonnes in 2020.

But the ocean has only so much to give. The World Bank reckons that 90% of the world’s fisheries are being fished either at or over their capacity . Aquaculture has therefore accounted for nearly all the growth in fish consumption since 1990 (see chart). It will have to account for almost all the growth to come, too.

As with farming on land though, aquaculture can cause environmental damage. Many farmed fish are grown in net pens, either in rivers or the open ocean . Uneaten food and fish waste can pollute the surrounding waters. When net pens break, escaped farmed fish can damage the local ecosystem. Inland “flow-through” farms require continuous streams of freshwater from rivers or wells, competing with those who might wish to drink it instead. Rearing lots of fish in close proximity risks outbreaks of diseases and parasites, which sweep in from the open water. That requires antibiotics and other drugs to keep the fish healthy.

It is these sorts of problems that newer fish farms, like Salten Smolt, hope to solve. It makes use of a technology called “recirculating aquaculture systems”, or RAS for short (pronounced “Rass”). Rather than relying on a constant flow of natural water to keep fish healthy, a RAS system grows fish on land in tanks whose water is continuously cleaned and recycled. That offers three big advantages. Compared with standard aquaculture systems, RAS farms use far less water, can take better care of their fish, and can allow picky species to be raised anywhere in the world.

RAS farms are, in essence, much bigger versions of home aquariums. Each consists of a tank in which the fish swim, and a set of water-cleaning components to dispose of the waste that they produce. Much of the technology is recycled from the sewage-treatment industry.

Reduce, re-use and recycle

Unwanted solids—fish faeces and uneaten feed, mostly—are removed first. This is done mechanically, using a conical tank, gravity and a series of increasingly fine mesh filters. Most of the remaining waste is ammonia. Fish secrete the stuff through their gills, as a byproduct of their metabolisms, and too much is toxic. The ammonia-laden water is therefore pumped through colonies of bacteria which, given enough oxygen, will convert the ammonia into nitrite and nitrate. Further steps can remove other contaminants such as phosphorus and heavy metals.

The cleaner the water, the more can be recirculated, and the less is needed from outside. A completely closed loop is impractical, at least for now. But state-of-the-art systems, such as Salten Smolt’s, can reduce water usage by more than 99%. Standard salmon-farming consumes about 50,000 litres of water for each kilogram of salmon produced. A RAS system might need just 150. The upshot, says Steve Sutton, the founder of TransparentSea, a RAS shrimp farm near Los Angeles, is that RAS farms “leave the wild environment alone so that [farmed fish] don’t spread pathogens or pollute the waterways”.

Concentrating the waste in one place offers advantages of its own. One of the biggest missed opportunities with standard aquaculture, says Kari Attramadal, head of research at Nofitech, another Norwegian aquaculture firm, is that the waste released into the environment from standard fish farms contains plenty of valuable nutrients. Nitrates can be used as food for hydroponically grown crops. John Sällebrant, Salten Smolt’s production manager, says that the firm recovers and dries fish faeces, as well as uneaten feed, for conversion into agricultural fertiliser.

Keeping fish alive in artificial tanks relies on keeping tight control of the entire system. Errors can be costly. If the oxygenation system fails, says Dr Attramadal, fish can start to die within eight minutes. But that need for careful monitoring also offers the ability to fine-tune the environment in which the fish are being raised. That allows ras systems to perform an aquatic version of what, on land, is called precision agriculture.

Salmon, for instance, prefer cold water. A climate-controlled tank is able to provide the ideal temperature at all times, without worrying about currents, tides or weather, boosting the speed with which the fish grow. ReelData, a startup based in Nova Scotia, uses data from cameras and sensors in RAS tanks to estimate how hungry fish are, how much they weigh and even to assess how stressed they are. The firm says its technology can raise a farm’s productivity by up to 20%.

And because they do not rely on the natural environment, RAS systems can, in principle, be built anywhere. Atlantic Sapphire, another Norwegian firm, has built an Atlantic salmon farm near Miami, a thousand miles south of the fish’s natural range. Being close to big cities reduces the distance that fish have to travel before arriving on a dinner plate. Pure Salmon Technology, a Norwegian ras provider, is building a farm in Japan. It reckons that lower transport costs will more than halve the carbon footprint of each kilogram of salmon, despite the extra energy costs involved in running a RAS system.

As with any new technology, there have been teething troubles. Half a million fish, or about 5% of the total, died at Atlantic Sapphire’s plant in Florida in 2021, for instance, after problems with its filtration systems. (The firm describes the incident as a piece of “expensive learning” to be “seen in the context of RAS having been in the early stages of its rapid development”.)

The biggest downside is cost. All those pipes, pumps and monitoring systems mean that capital costs are significantly higher for ras farms than for standard ones. (That is one reason why many existing systems focus on salmon, a comparatively pricey fish.) Even in Norway, where about half the country’s salmon farms use RAS , it is limited to the first stage of the fish’s life. Juvenile fish are still grown into adults in standard open-water pens.

Tax changes in Norway may change that, says Matt Craze of Spheric Research, a firm of aquaculture market analysts. And there are other ways to keep costs down. Some firms are experimenting with hybrid systems. These dispense with the more expensive bits of waste-management kit, but can still cut overall water usage significantly. Economies of scale will help, too. Mr Craze reckons that, while smaller RAS farms might produce fish at twice the price of standard aquaculture, bigger ones should, if they can iron out the gremlins, eventually be able to match them.

For now, though, RAS remains a tiddler. Kathrin Steinberg, head of research at the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, a Dutch non-profit organisation, says that less than 5% of the farms certified by her organisation make use of it. But with the world’s demand for fish rising inexorably, that share, she says, is growing. ■

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Fishy business”

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Fish Farming

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2022
• Cite this reference work entry

• João Rito 6 , 7 &
• Ivan Viegas 6  

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

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Fish aquaculture ; Fish culture

Fish farming refers to the breeding, rearing, conservation, etc. of finfish by means that supplement or replace those normally available in nature (O’Sullivan et al. 1996 ). Also known as pisciculture, is in a broader sense aquaculture of finfish species.

Introduction

Basic principles.

Aquaculture of fish species is a practice that can be used to meet several different objectives such as rearing of ornamental species for home aquaria, educational and recreational purposes, for strengthening stocks of existing fish, production of raw ingredients for feeds, and food production for direct human consumption. Fish farming can be implemented in a multitude of environments and with a variety of techniques, from the most rudimentary to the highly technological ones, with a common objective of guaranteeing fish welfare while keeping the best possible quality of the rearing medium (water). This will in turn allow the maintenance, growth, and...

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Rito, J., Viegas, I. (2022). Fish Farming. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (eds) Life Below Water. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98536-7_21

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Road to BIOFloc - Advance Fish Farming

February 6, 2024 By RoadtoBiofloc

Hello friends, I have written an eBook on the Innovative Way of Fish Farming where I have put all the experiences that I gained through my cultural period. This eBook content theory as well as step by step practical pictorial demonstration to make someone easy to understand. You can watch my videos at https://www.youtube.com/c/RoadtoBioFloc .  Please contact me if you are interested in buying this eBook.

In the realm of sustainable food production, fish farming, or aquaculture, offers a promising avenue for individuals looking to embark on a rewarding and environmentally conscious journey. Whether you’re a backyard enthusiast or aspiring entrepreneur, understanding the fundamentals of fish farming is essential for success. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the step-by-step process of starting a fish farm, from selecting the right species to implementing best practices and maximizing profitability.

Understanding the Basics of Fish Farming

Fish farming, or aquaculture, involves the cultivation of fish under controlled conditions, typically in ponds, tanks, or cages. Unlike traditional fishing, which relies on wild fish populations, fish farming allows for sustainable production and controlled growth rates, ensuring a steady supply of seafood to meet consumer demand.

Choosing the Right Species

The first step in starting a fish farm is choosing the right species to cultivate. Consider factors such as climate, water availability, market demand, and your own preferences and resources. Popular species for beginners include tilapia, catfish, trout, and carp, as they are relatively easy to raise and adapt well to a variety of environments.

Setting Up Your Fish Farm

Once you’ve chosen a species, it’s time to set up your fish farm. Start by selecting a suitable location with access to clean water sources and ample space for your operation. Depending on your budget and scale, you can opt for outdoor ponds, indoor tanks, or even recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) for more controlled environments.

Optimizing Water Quality

Water quality is paramount in fish farming, as it directly impacts the health and growth of your fish. Test your water regularly for pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and ammonia levels, and take steps to maintain optimal conditions. This may include aeration, filtration, and regular water changes to ensure a healthy environment for your fish.

Feeding and Nutrition

Proper nutrition is essential for the growth and development of your fish. Choose a high-quality feed that is appropriate for the species you’re raising, and feed your fish according to their nutritional needs. Overfeeding can lead to water quality issues and health problems, so monitor feeding carefully and adjust as needed.

Disease Prevention and Management

Just like any other livestock, fish are susceptible to diseases and parasites. Implement a proactive disease prevention plan, which may include quarantine procedures, vaccination, and biosecurity measures to minimize the risk of outbreaks. Familiarize yourself with common fish diseases and their symptoms, and be prepared to take swift action if problems arise.

Maximizing Profitability

While fish farming can be a fulfilling hobby, many beginners are also interested in the potential for profitability. To maximize your returns, focus on efficiency, sustainability, and market demand. Consider value-added products such as smoked fish or fish fillets, and explore direct-to-consumer sales channels such as farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs, and online platforms.

Continuous Learning and Improvement

As with any new venture, fish farming requires continuous learning and adaptation. Stay informed about the latest research, technologies, and industry trends, and be willing to experiment and innovate in your own operation. Join local fish farming associations or online forums to connect with other enthusiasts and share knowledge and experiences.

Conclusion: Embarking on Your Fish Farming Journey

In conclusion, fish farming offers a rewarding and sustainable way to produce nutritious seafood while also connecting with nature and promoting environmental stewardship. By following the steps outlined in this guide and embracing the principles of responsible aquaculture, beginners can set themselves up for success in the exciting world of fish farming. Whether you’re raising tilapia in your backyard pond or dreaming of a commercial trout farm, the key is to start small, learn as you go, and enjoy the journey of cultivating life beneath the surface of the water.

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• Biology Article
• Fish Production Fish Farming

Fish Production: The Art Of Fish Farming

“Fish production or fish farming is a form of aquaculture in which fish are raised in enclosures to be sold as food.”

What is Fish Production?

Fish are a very high source of proteins and have great nutritional value. Fish production was initially dependent on fish capturing. However, most of the captured fish were used for industrial purposes and were hardly consumed by man. Therefore, an alternative method to increase fish production was devised that includes farming and husbandry of economically important aquatic organisms. This is known as aquaculture.

Also Read:  Poultry farming

Methods of Fish Production

Fish production can be done in two ways:

Capture Fishery

Naturally occurring fish are harvested by capture fishery. Capture fishery is sometimes also known as wild fishery.

Culture Fishery

This is the controlled cultivation of fish in water bodies. It can also be referred to as fish farming or pisciculture. Note that pisciculture is a form of aquaculture as aquaculture is the scientific rearing and management of all aquatic animals.

Fishery is further divided into:

Inland Fishery

Marine fishery.

• In this, fishing is done in freshwater bodies, such as lakes, ponds, rivers, and tanks. Reservoirs where freshwater bodies and seawater bodies join also form inland fisheries.
• The method incorporated here is generally pisciculture, as the yield of capture fishery is not very high.
• 5-6 species are reared in one water body. This selection of species is such that they have different food habits yet there is no competition for food.
• Common varieties reared are Rohu, Catla, Grass Carp, Common Carp, etc.
• With the Indian landmass being a peninsula, we have been blessed with a coastline of 7517 km. Thus, fishing is a source of livelihood for 14 million people. These 14 million people cast their fishing nets in marine fisheries, i.e. in marine waters- the sea and the ocean.
• These are further divided into coastal fisheries that are near the shore and off-shore or deep-sea fisheries that are deeper in the sea.
• Sardines, mackerel, hilsa, tuna, Pomfret, mussels, prawns, oysters, etc. are some common types.
• The use of echo-sounders and satellites for the location of large fish to increases the yield.

Also Read:  Cattle farming

Culture fishery is also known as fish farming. Let us have a detailed look at the process of fish production by fish farming, and its advantages.

Fish Farming

About half the fish consumed today is raised globally through fish farming. Some of the common fish species that are farmed include tuna, salmon, halibut, cod, and trout. The aquafarms can be in the form of mesh cages submerged in water or concrete enclosures on land. However, the fish farms can damage the ecosystem by introducing diseases, pollutants and invasive species.

Methods of Fish Farming

Fish farming involves the following methods:

Extensive Fish Farming

In this type of farming, economic and labour inputs are low. The natural food production plays a major role in this type of farming. Fertilizers may be added to increase the fertility and hence, the production of fish.

Semi-intensive Fish Farming

This method implies moderate levels of economic and labour inputs. The production can be increased by supplementary feeding or addition of fertilizers. Thus, the production of fish is higher.

Intensive Fish Farming

In this method, the fish are stocked with as many fish as possible. The fish are fed with supplementary feed.

Advantages of Fish Farming

• The farmed fish provides high quality protein for human consumption.
• Fish farming can be integrated into the existing farm to create additional income and improve its water management.
• The farmers can select the fish species with desired characteristics to raise.
• Fish in a pond are not accessible to everyone. Thus, they are secured and are harvested at will.
• Fish in a pond are nearby.

Also Read:  Animal Husbandry

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Aquaculture: Types, Benefits and Importance (Fish Farming)

Since about 71% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, humans have realized its importance as a resource.

For this reason, one of the areas heavily exploited regarding the use of water as a resource is aquaculture, especially in the production of food as opposed to using terrestrial land.

Aquaculture is the process of rearing, breeding and harvesting of aquatic species, both animals and plants, in controlled aquatic environments like oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds and streams.

Aquaculture serves different purposes, including food production, restoration of threatened and  endangered species populations , wild stock population enhancement, the building of aquariums, and fish cultures and habitat restoration .

Here are the various types of aquaculture, as well as their importance.

According to Wikipedia ,

“Aquaculture (less commonly spelled aquiculture), also known as aquafarming, is the farming of fish, crustaceans, mollusks, aquatic plants, algae, and other organisms.

Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the harvesting of wild fish. Mariculture refers to aquaculture practiced in marine environments and underwater habitats.”

Types of Aquaculture

There are different types of aquaculture –

I. Depending on Hydrobiological Features

II. Depending on the Motive of Farming

III. Depending on Special Operational Techniques

Various types of cultural practices are carried out in each of these divisions. Some have been discussed here.

1. Mariculture

Mariculture is aquaculture that involves the use of seawater . It can either be done next to an ocean, with a sectioned-off part of the ocean, or in ponds separate from the ocean but containing seawater all the same. The organisms bred here range from mollusks to seafood options like prawns, shellfish, and even seaweed.

Growing plants like seaweed are also part of mariculture. These sea plant and animal species find many uses in manufacturing industries, such as in cosmetics and jewelry, where collagen from seaweed is used to make facial creams. Pearls are picked from mollusks and made into fashion items.

2. Fish Farming

Fish farming is the most common type of aquaculture. It involves the selective breeding of fish, either in freshwater or seawater, with the purpose of producing a food source for consumption.   Fish farming  is highly exploited as it allows for the production of a cheap source of protein.

Furthermore, fish farming is easier to do than other kinds of farming as fish are not care-intensive since they only require food and proper water and temperature conditions.

The process is also less land-intensive as the size of ponds required to grow some fish species like tilapia is much smaller than the one needed for the same amount of protein from beef cattle.

3. Algaculture

Algaculture is a type of aquaculture involving the cultivation of algae . Algae are microbial organisms that share animal and plant characteristics. They are sometimes motile like other microbes, but they also contain chloroplasts that make them green and allow them to photosynthesize just like green plants.

However, they have to be grown and harvested in large numbers for economic feasibility. Algae are finding many applications in today’s markets. Exxon Mobile has been making strides in developing them as a new source of energy .

4. Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture(IMTA)

IMTA is an advanced system of aquaculture where different trophic levels are mixed into the system to provide different nutritional needs for each other. Notably, it is an efficient system because it tries to emulate the ecological system in the natural habitat.

The IMTA uses these intertropical transfer of resources to ensure maximum resource utilization by using the waste of larger organisms as food sources for the smaller ones. The practice ensures the nutrients are recycled, meaning the process is less wasteful and produces more products.

5. Inland Pond Culture

This usually involves inland artificial ponds of about 20 acres in size and about 6-8ft deep. It is common to see aeration systems connected to the pond to introduce air into the ponds. This enhances the supply of oxygen and also reduces ice formation in the winter season.

In China, over 75% of the farmed freshwater fish are produced in constructed ponds , and nearly all of the farmed catfish are raised in ponds in the U.S.

6. Recirculating Systems

This involves a closed set of chambers (units) where fish is kept in one and water treatment is kept in another . It is highly dependent on the power supply, as water must constantly be pumped through the fish chambers.

As water flows through the treatment chamber, particulate matter is filtered out, and air is introduced. This closed system controls the salinity, temperature, oxygen, and anything that can cause harm to the fish.

It is an environmentally friendly system that’s highly efficient as very little new water is introduced to replace water that evaporated. The residue from the filters is also disposed of responsibly.

7. Open-net pen and Cage Systems

Open-net pen and Cage systems are often found offshore and in freshwater lakes. Mesh cages of between 6 and 60 cubic feet (pens) are installed in the water with the fish inside them. With a high concentration of fish in the pens, waste, chemicals, parasites, and diseases are often exchanged in the immediate water environments.

The fish also attract predatory animals (bigger fish), which are often entangled in the nets. This system uses public water; therefore, environmental regulation and some authorization protocols must be respected.

8. Flow-through / Raceway

This is a system made of long units stocked with fish. The units have feeding stations attached to them. Water is diverted from flowing water and fed into the raceway units flowing downstream . Down the end of the unit, waste is collected and disposed of. Raceways are common for culturing trout.

Benefits of Aquaculture

Economic benefits, 1. an alternative food source.

Fish and other seafood are good sources of protein. They also have more nutritional value and help add natural oils such as omega-3 fatty acids into a diet.

Also, since the aquatic creatures involved offer white meat, we can safely argue that aquaculture is generally good for the blood as it helps reduce cholesterol levels as opposed to beef’s red meat.

Fish is also easier to keep compared to other meat-producing animals as they are able to convert more feed into protein. Therefore, its overall conversion of a pound of food to a pound of protein makes it cheaper to rear fish as they use the food more efficiently.

2. An Alternative Fuel Source

Algae are slowly being developed into alternative fuel sources by having them produce fuels that can replace contemporary  fossil fuels . Algae produce lipids that, if harvested, can be burned as an alternative fuel source whose only by-products would be water when burnt.

Such a breakthrough could ease the world’s dependency on drilled fossil fuels and reduces the price of energy by having it grown instead of drilling petroleum.

Moreover, algae fuel is a cleaner and farmable source of energy , which means it can revolutionize the energy sector and create a more stable economy that avoids the boom-bust nature of oil and replaces it with a more abundant fuel source.

3. Increases Jobs in the Market

Aquaculture increases the number of possible jobs in the market. It provides both new products for a market and creates job opportunities as labor is required to maintain the pools and harvest the organisms grown.

The increase in jobs is mostly realized in third-world countries as aquaculture provides both a food source and an extra source of income to supplement those who live in these regions.

Aquaculture also saves fishermen time as they do not have to spend their days at sea fishing. It allows them free time to pursue other economic activities like engaging in alternative businesses. This boosts entrepreneurship and provides more hiring possibilities and more jobs.

4. Reduces Sea Food Trade Deficit

The seafood trade in America is mainly based on trade from Asia and Europe, with most of it being imported. The resultant balance places a trade deficit on the nation.

Aquaculture would provide a means for reducing this deficit at a lower opportunity cost, as local production would mean that the seafood would be fresher. It would also be cheaper due to reduced transport costs.

Environmental Benefits

1. creates a barrier against pollution with mollusc and seaweed.

Mollusks are filter feeders, while seaweed acts a lot like the grass of the sea . Both these organisms sift the water that flows through them as brought in by the current and clean the water. This provides a buffer region that protects the rest of the sea from  pollution from the land , specifically from activities that disturb the sea bed and raise dust.

Also, the economic benefits of mollusks and seaweed can create more pressure on governments to protect their habitats as they serve economic importance. The financial benefits realized provide an incentive for the government to protect the seas to protect seafood revenue.

2. Reduces Fishing Pressure on Wild Stock

The practice of aquaculture allows for alternative sources of food instead of fishing the same species in their natural habitats . Population numbers of some wild stocks of some species are in danger of depleting due to overfishing and uncontrolled exploitation. The use of unsustainable fishing methods, such as bottom trawlers, is also reduced.

Aquaculture provides an alternative by allowing farmers to breed those same species in captivity and allow the wild populations to revitalize. The incentive of less labor for more gains pushes fishers to convert to fish farmers and make even more profit than before.

It also allows the control of the supply of the fish in the market, giving them the ability to create surplus stock or reduce their production to reap the best profits available.

3. Low Environmental Impact

Studies conducted by   NOAA indicate aquaculture poses a low risk to the environment . The impact is mostly local and temporary. In some cases, aquaculture can benefit the environment. Where filter-feeding shellfish, such as oysters, are cultured in-situ, water quality in ponds and lakes can improve.

Fish and shellfish can also be farmed using methods that do not harm the environment and that helps meets the growing demand for seafood by supplementing wild harvests.

4. Water Usage

Aquaculture systems often take advantage of harvested runoffs, stormwater, and surface water. This reduces the dependency on other sources of water supply. In addition, ponds maintain soil moisture in their vicinity, thereby conserving natural resources.

Importance of Aquaculture

1. health benefit.

All over the world, the demand for seafood has increased because people have learned that seafood is healthier and helps fight cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and many other major illnesses. Now seafood has become part of regular diets.

2. Sustainable Use of Sea Resources

Aquaculture provides alternatives for fishing from the sea. An increase in demand for food sources and globalization has led to an increase in fishing. Aquaculture is currently estimated to account for approximately 13 percent (10.2 million tons) of world fish production.

Yet, this has led fishermen to become selfish and overfish the desired or high-demand species. Aquaculture provides both an alternative and an opportunity for wild stocks to replenish over time.

3. Conservation of Biodiversity

Aquacultures also protect biodiversity by reducing the fishing activities on the wild stock in their ecosystems . By providing alternatives to fishing, there is a reduced attack on the wild populations of the various species in the sea. Reduced action of fishing saves the diversity of the aquatic ecosystem from extinction due to overfishing.

4. Increased Efficiency, More Resources for Less Effort

Fish convert feed into body protein more efficiently than cattle or chicken production. It is much more efficient, meaning the fish companies make more food for less feed.

Such efficiency means that less food and energy is used to produce food, meaning that the production process is also cheaper. It saves resources and even allows for more food to be produced, leading to secure reserves and less  stress on the environment .

Aquacultures will add to wild seafood and make it cheaper and accessible to all, especially in regions where they depend on imported seafood products.

5. Reduced Environmental Disturbance

By increasing aquaculture, fish farming in specific, there is a reduced need for the fishing of the wild stock. As an outcome, it puts less stress on the ecosystem and equally reduces human interference.

Actions of motorboats and other human influences, such as the removal of viable breeding adult fish, are all stresses put on the aquatic ecosystems, and their discontinuation allows the ecosystem to flourish and find its natural balance.

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A Five-Step Plan to Feed the World

The Next Breadbasket

Solaiman Sheik shows off the harvest from his father’s small pond near Khulna, Bangladesh: freshwater prawns, a profitable export. The family also raises fish in the pond and, in the dry season, rice fertilized by fish waste—a polyculture that has tripled output with little environmental downside. Photograph by Jim Richardson

How to Farm a Better Fish

In a dark, dank warehouse in the Blue Ridge foothills of Virginia, Bill Martin picks up a bucket of brown pellets and slings them into a long concrete tank. Fat, white tilapia the size of dinner plates boil to the surface. Martin, president of Blue Ridge Aquaculture, one of the world’s largest indoor fish farms, smiles at the feeding frenzy.

By Joel K. Bourne, Jr.

Photographs by Brian Skerry

“This is St. Peter’s fish, the fish Jesus fed the multitudes,” he says, his raspy voice resonating like a preacher’s. Unlike Jesus, however, Martin does not give his fish away. Each day he sells 12,000 pounds of live tilapia to Asian markets from Washington, D.C., to Toronto, and he’s planning another farm on the West Coast. “My model is the poultry industry,” he says. “The difference is, our fish are perfectly happy.”

“How do you know they’re happy?” I ask, noting that the mat of tilapia in the tank looks thick enough for St. Peter to walk on.

“Generally they show they’re not happy by dying,” Martin says. “I haven’t lost a tank of fish yet.”

An industrial park in Appalachia may seem an odd place to grow a few million natives of the Nile. But industrial-scale fish farms are popping up everywhere these days. Aquaculture has expanded about 14-fold since 1980. In 2012 its global output, from silvery salmon to homely sea cucumbers only a Chinese cook could love, reached more than 70 million tons—exceeding beef production clearly for the first time and amounting to nearly half of all fish and shellfish consumed on Earth. Population growth, income growth, and seafood’s heart-healthy reputation are expected to drive up demand by 35 percent or more in just the next 20 years. With the global catch of wild fish stagnant, experts say virtually all of that new seafood will have to be farmed.

“There is no way we are going to get all of the protein we need out of wild fish,” says Rosamond Naylor, a food-policy expert at Stanford University who has researched aquaculture systems. “But people are very wary that we’re going to create another feedlot industry in the ocean. So they want it to be right from the start.”

There are good reasons to be wary.

Tilapia pens in Laguna de Bay, the largest lake in the Philippines, are choked by an algal bloom they helped create. The overstocked lake produces large numbers of farmed fish, but excess nutrients trigger blooms that use up oxygen—and kill fish.

The new “blue revolution,” which has delivered cheap, vacuum-packed shrimp, salmon, and tilapia to grocery freezers, has brought with it many of the warts of agriculture on land: habitat destruction, water pollution, and food-safety scares. During the 1980s vast swaths of tropical mangroves were bulldozed to build farms that now produce a sizable portion of the world’s shrimp. Aquacultural pollution—a putrid cocktail of nitrogen, phosphorus, and dead fish—is now a widespread hazard in Asia, where 90 percent of farmed fish are located. To keep fish alive in densely stocked pens, some Asian farmers resort to antibiotics and pesticides that are banned for use in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The U.S. now imports 90 percent of its seafood—around 2 percent of which is inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. In 2006 and 2007 the FDA discovered numerous banned substances, including known or suspected carcinogens, in aquaculture shipments from Asia.

Nor have fish farms in other parts of the globe been free of problems. The modern salmon industry, which over the past three decades has plunked densely packed net pens full of Atlantic salmon into pristine fjords from Norway to Patagonia, has been plagued by parasites, pollution, and disease. Scottish salmon farms lost nearly 10 percent of their fish in 2012 to amoebic gill disease; in Chile infectious anemia has killed an estimated two billion dollars’ worth of salmon since 2007. A disease outbreak in 2011 virtually wiped out the shrimp industry in Mozambique.

The problem isn’t the ancient art of aquaculture per se; it’s the rapid intensification of it. Chinese farmers started raising carp in their rice fields at least 2,500 years ago. But with that country’s aquacultural output now at 42 million tons a year, fish pens line many rivers, lakes, and seashores. Farmers stock their ponds with fast-growing breeds of carp and tilapia and use concentrated fish feed to maximize their growth.

“I was very influenced by the green revolution in grains and rice,” says Li Sifa, a fish geneticist at Shanghai Ocean University. Li is known as the “father of tilapia” for developing a fast-growing breed that’s become the backbone of China’s tilapia industry, which produces 1.5 million tons a year, much of it for export. “Good seeds are very important,” Li says. “One good variety can raise a strong industry that can feed more people. That is my duty. To make better fish, more fish, so farmers can get rich and people can have more food.”

Workers harvest channel catfish at an America’s Catch catfish farm in Itta Bena, Mississippi (left). The farm produces 30 million pounds of fish each year from its 500 ponds. The fish are vegetarians: their feed is made from soy, corn, rice, wheat, and cottonseed meal, with no antibiotics. “We’re taking the high road,” says owner Solon Scott. “This is a good, sustainable source of protein.” A tilapia (right) reveals a mouthful of eggs that will be extracted for hatching at a farm. Mouth brooding—along with rapid growth, a vegetarian diet, and the ability to thrive in dense populations—helps make the tilapia an easy fish to farm.

Workers harvest channel catfish at an America’s Catch catfish farm in Itta Bena, Mississippi. The farm produces 30 million pounds of fish each year from its 500 ponds. The fish are vegetarians: their feed is made from soy, corn, rice, wheat, and cottonseed meal, with no antibiotics. “We’re taking the high road,” says owner Solon Scott. “This is a good, sustainable source of protein.”

A tilapia reveals a mouthful of eggs that will be extracted for hatching at a farm. Mouth brooding—along with rapid growth, a vegetarian diet, and the ability to thrive in dense populations—helps make the tilapia an easy fish to farm.

How to do that without spreading disease and pollution? For tilapia farmer Bill Martin, the solution is simple: raise fish in tanks on land, not in pens in a lake or the sea. “Net pens are a total goat rodeo,” says Martin, sitting in an office adorned with hunting trophies. “You’ve got sea lice, disease, escapement, and death. You compare that with a 100 percent controlled environment, possibly as close to zero impact on the oceans as we can get. If we don’t leave the oceans alone, Mother Nature is going to kick our butts big-time.”

Martin’s fish factory, however, doesn’t leave the land and air alone, and running it isn’t cheap. To keep his fish alive, he needs a water-treatment system big enough for a small town; the electricity to power it comes from coal. Martin recirculates about 85 percent of the water in his tanks, and the rest—high in ammonia and fish waste—goes to the local sewage plant, while the voluminous solid waste heads to the landfill. To replace the lost water, he pumps half a million gallons a day from an underground aquifer. Martin’s goals are to recirculate 99 percent of the water and to produce his own low-carbon electricity by capturing methane from the waste.

But those goals are still a few years away. And though Martin is convinced that recirculating systems are the future, so far only a few other companies are producing fish—including salmon, cobia, and trout—in tanks on land.

A diver nets a ten-pound cobia for sampling before harvest in one of Open Blue’s dozen offshore pens. Able to hold hundreds of thousands of fish, but less densely stocked and better flushed than nearshore salmon pens, they produce little pollution. Cobia contain as much healthy fish oil as salmon do.

Eight miles off the coast of Panama, Brian O’Hanlon is going in the exact opposite direction. On a calm day in May the 34-year-old president of Open Blue and I are lying at the bottom of a massive, diamond-shaped fish cage, 60 feet beneath the cobalt blue surface of the Caribbean, watching 40,000 cobia do a slow, hypnotic pirouette above us. The bubbles from our regulators rise up to meet them; one pauses to stare into my mask. Unlike Martin’s tilapia or even the salmon in a commercial pen, these eight-pound youngsters have plenty of room.

O’Hanlon, a third-generation fishmonger from Long Island, grew up with New York City’s famed Fulton Fish Market as his playground. In the early 1990s the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery and the import tariffs imposed on Norwegian salmon bankrupted the family business. His father and uncles kept saying that the industry’s future was farmed fish. So as a teenager, O’Hanlon started raising red snapper in a giant tank in his parents’ basement.

Now, off Panama, he operates the largest offshore fish farm in the world. He has some 200 employees, a big hatchery onshore, and a fleet of bright orange vessels to service a dozen of the giant cages, which can hold more than a million cobia. A popular sport fish, cobia has been caught commercially only in small quantities—in the wild the fish are too solitary—but its explosive growth rate makes it popular with farmers. Like salmon, it’s full of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, and it produces a mild, buttery, white fillet that O’Hanlon claims is the perfect canvas for picky chefs. Last year he shipped 800 tons of cobia to high-end restaurants around the U.S. Next year he hopes to double that amount—and finally turn a profit.

Maintenance and operating costs are high in offshore waters. Although most salmon operations are tucked in protected coves near shore, the waves over O’Hanlon’s cages can hit 20 feet or more. But all that rushing water is the point: He’s using dilution to avoid pollution and disease. Not only are his cages stocked at a fraction of the density of the typical salmon farm, but also, sitting in deep water, they’re constantly being flushed by the current and the waves. So far O’Hanlon hasn’t had to treat the cobia with antibiotics, and researchers from the University of Miami have not detected any trace of fish waste outside his pens. They suspect the diluted waste is being scavenged by undernourished plankton, since the offshore waters are nutrient poor.

O’Hanlon is in Panama because he couldn’t get a permit to build in the U.S. Public concerns over pollution and fierce opposition from commercial fishermen have made coastal states leery of any fish farms. But O’Hanlon is convinced he’s pioneering the next big thing in aquaculture.

“This is the future,” he says, once we’ve said goodbye to the cobia and are back aboard his orange skiff. “This is what the industry is going to have to do in order to keep growing, especially in the tropics.” Recirculating systems like Martin’s, he says, will never produce enough biomass. “There is no way they can scale up to meet the market demand. And to make one profitable, it’s like a cattle feedlot, where you cram so many fish in you’re just trying to keep them alive. You’re not providing the best environment possible for them.”

Gustavo Valdez of Pesquera Delly seafoods inspects shrimp grown in the Gulf of California, three miles off Guaymas. His four cages (left) each produce 5 to 13 tons of shrimp every four to six months. They have less impact than a conventional shrimp farm, but they require Mexican government subsidies. “We need to produce 30 tons per cage to be economical,” says Valdez.

Gustavo Valdez of Pesquera Delly seafoods inspects shrimp grown in the Gulf of California, three miles off Guaymas. His four cages (left) each produce 5 to 13 tons of shrimp every four to six months. They have less impact than a conventional shrimp farm, but they require Mexican government subsidies.

“We need to produce 30 tons per cage to be economical,” says Valdez.

Whether you’re raising fish in an offshore cage or in a filtered tank on land, you still have to feed them. They have one big advantage over land animals: You have to feed them a lot less. Fish need fewer calories, because they’re cold-blooded and because, living in a buoyant environment, they don’t fight gravity as much. It takes roughly a pound of feed to produce a pound of farmed fish; it takes almost two pounds of feed to produce a pound of chicken, about three for a pound of pork, and about seven for a pound of beef. As a source of animal protein that can meet the needs of nine billion people with the least demand on Earth’s resources, aquaculture—particularly for omnivores like tilapia, carp, and catfish—looks like a good bet.

Pounds for Pound

Different sources of animal protein in our diet place different demands on natural resources. One measure of this is the “feed conversion ratio”: an estimate of the feed required to gain one pound of body mass. By this measure, farming salmon is about seven times more efficient than raising beef.

But some of the farmed fish that affluent consumers love to eat have a disadvantage as well: They’re voracious carnivores. The rapid growth rate that makes cobia a good farm animal is fueled in the wild by a diet of smaller fish or crustaceans, which provide the perfect blend of nutrients—including the omega-3 fatty acids that cardiologists love. Cobia farmers such as O’Hanlon feed their fish pellets containing up to 25 percent fish meal and 5 percent fish oil, with the remainder mostly grain-based nutrients. The meal and oil come from forage fish like sardines and anchovies, which school in huge shoals off the Pacific coast of South America. These forage fisheries are among the largest in the world but are prone to spectacular collapses.

Aquaculture’s share of the forage-fish catch has nearly doubled since 2000. It now gobbles up nearly 70 percent of the global fish meal supply and almost 90 percent of the world’s fish oil. So hot is the market that many countries are sending ships to Antarctica to harvest more than 200,000 tons a year of tiny krill—a major food source for penguins, seals, and whales. Though much of the krill ends up in pharmaceuticals and other products, to critics of aquaculture the idea of vacuuming up the bottom of the food chain in order to churn out slabs of relatively cheap protein sounds like ecological insanity.

In their defense, fish farmers have been getting more efficient, farming omnivorous fish like tilapia and using feeds that contain soybeans and other grains; salmon feed these days is typically no more than 10 percent fish meal. The amount of forage fish used per pound of output has fallen by roughly 80 percent from what it was 15 years ago. It could fall a lot further, says Rick Barrows, who has been developing fish feeds at his U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Bozeman, Montana, for the past three decades. “Fish don’t require fish meal,” says Barrows. “They require nutrients. We’ve been feeding mostly vegetarian diets to rainbow trout for 12 years now. Aquaculture could get out of fish meal today if it wanted to.”

Replacing fish oil remains trickier, because it carries those prized omega-3 fatty acids. In the sea they’re made by algae, then passed up the food chain, accumulating in higher concentrations along the way. Some feed companies are already extracting omega-3s directly from algae—the process used to make omega-3 for eggs and orange juice. That has the added benefit of reducing the DDT, PCBs, and dioxins that can also accumulate in farmed fish. An even quicker fix, Stanford’s Rosamond Naylor says, would be to genetically modify canola oil to produce high levels of omega-3s.

At dawn on China’s Fujian coast, seaweed farmers head out to tend their aquatic fields. Such farms help China grow 12 million tons of food a year with no soil or fresh water and no fertilizer except runoff from the land. Oceans cover 71 percent of Earth yet provide less than 2 percent of our food—for now. Photograph by George Steinmetz

Figuring out what to feed farmed fish may ultimately be more important for the planet than the question of where to farm them. “The whole concept of moving into offshore waters and on land isn’t because we’ve run out of space in the coastal zone,” says Stephen Cross of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, who was an environmental consultant to the aquaculture industry for decades. Though pollution from coastal salmon farms gave the whole industry a black eye, he says, these days even salmon farms are producing 10 to 15 times the fish they did in the 1980s and 1990s with a fraction of the pollution. In a remote corner of Vancouver Island he’s trying something new and even less damaging.

His inspiration comes from ancient China. More than a thousand years ago, during the Tang dynasty, Chinese farmers developed an intricate polyculture of carp, pigs, ducks, and vegetables on their small family farms, using the manure from ducks and pigs to fertilize the pond algae grazed by the carp. Carp were later added to flooded paddies, where the omnivorous fish gobbled up insect pests and weeds and fertilized the rice before becoming food themselves. Such carp-paddy polyculture became a mainstay of China’s traditional fish-and-rice diet, sustaining millions of Chinese for centuries. It’s still used on more than seven million acres of paddies in the country.

In a fjord on the British Columbia coast, Cross has devised a polyculture of his own. He feeds only one species—a sleek, hardy native of the North Pacific known as sablefish or black cod. Slightly down current from their pens he has placed hanging baskets full of native cockles, oysters, and scallops as well as mussels that feed on the fine organic excretions of the fish. Next to the baskets he grows long lines of sugar kelp, used in soups and sushi and also to produce bioethanol; these aquatic plants filter the water even further, converting nearly all the remaining nitrates and phosphorus to plant tissue. On the seafloor, 80 feet below the fish pens, sea cucumbers—considered delicacies in China and Japan—vacuum up heavier organic waste that the other species miss. Minus the sablefish, Cross says, his system could be fitted onto existing fish farms to serve as a giant water filter that would produce extra food and profit.

“Nobody gets into farmed production without wanting to make a buck,” he adds, over a plate of pan-seared sablefish and scallops the size of biscuits. “But you can’t just go volume, volume, volume. We’re going quality, diversity, and sustainability.”

Farming Soars as Wild Catches Stall

With demand rising and many marine fish stocks already overfished, nearly half of all seafood now comes from aquaculture, which has grown at a double-digit clip for decades. Most of the growth is in Asia, home to 90 percent of fish farms. China, the world leader, imports additional fish to make fish oil, fish food, and other products.

Perry Raso of Matunuck, Rhode Island, farms a monoculture, not a polyculture, but he doesn’t feed his aquatic animals anything at all—and he’s got 12 million of them. Raso is an oyster farmer, one of the new generation of shellfish growers who’ve been blessed by virtually everyone, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program to the new Aquaculture Stewardship Council, which recently published its first standards for shellfish. A key to sustainability, these groups say, is learning to eat farther down the food chain. Shellfish are just one step up from the bottom. And besides producing a healthy product low in fat and high in omega-3s, shellfish farms clean the water of excess nutrients.

Raso, with his powerful build, five-o’clock shadow, and fisherman’s hoodie, looks more like the collegiate wrestler he once was than the greenest guy in the aquaculture business. He started his farm his senior year and was soon selling his oysters at farmers markets. “I’d get there, look around, and say, What am I doing around all these crunchy people?” Raso says. “But then I started making more money, started eating local foods, and you know what? That stuff was good.” Raso now serves 800 people a day in the summer at the Matunuck Oyster Bar. Meanwhile the University of Rhode Island has sent him on teaching trips to Africa, where aquaculture is exploding—and where people desperately need affordable, healthy protein.

A few hundred miles north, in the clear, frigid waters off Casco Bay, two Maine watermen, Paul Dobbins and Tollef Olson, have stepped down the food chain even farther. After watching one commercial-fishery closure after another devastate Maine’s coastal communities, they launched the first commercial kelp farm in the U.S., in 2009. They started with 3,000 linear feet of kelp line and last year farmed 30,000, harvesting three species that can grow up to five inches a day, even in winter. Their company, Ocean Approved, sells kelp as fresh-frozen, highly nutritious salad greens, slaw, and pasta to restaurants, schools, and hospitals along the Maine coast. Delegations from China, Japan, and South Korea have visited the farm—the seaweed industry is a five-billion-dollar business in East Asia.

Let us all eat kelp? “We call kelp the virtuous vegetable,” says Dobbins, “because we are able to create a nutritious food product with no arable land, no fresh water, no fertilizer, and no pesticides. And we’re helping clean the ocean while doing it. We think the ocean would approve.”

Contributing writer Joel K. Bourne, Jr., is working on a book about food. Brian Skerry photographed the bluefin tuna for our March issue.

The magazine thanks The Rockefeller Foundation and members of the National Geographic Society for their generous support of this series of articles.

All maps and graphics: Virginia W. Mason, Jason Treat, and Matthew Twombly, NGM Staff; Shelley Sperry. Integrated Aquaculture, source: Stephen Cross, University of Victoria, British Columbia. Indoor Aquaculture, source: Blue Ridge Aquaculture. Open-Ocean Aquaculture, source: Brian O'Hanlon, Open Blue. Pounds for Pound, sources: Malcolm Beveridge, WorldFish; Rodney Hill, University of Idaho; Robert Swick, University of New England, Australia; U.K. Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. Farming Soars as Wild Catches Stall, sources: FAOSTAT; Global Trade Information Services.

1996-2014 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TERMS OF SERVICE PRIVACY POLICY

The pros and cons of pond vs cage aquaculture in Kenya

Kenya’s aquaculture sector must grow to improve the country’s food security. This article looks into the pros and cons of cage versus pond farming, with insights from fish farmers in western and central regions, and provides recommendations for ways to help the sector to evolve.

In 2019 the Kenyan aquaculture sector produced 12.8 percent of the total fish production in the country, totalling approximately 18,000 tonnes , while fisheries production was 129,000 tonnes, which clearly shows the dominance of the capture fisheries sector. However, over the past decade, production from capture fisheries has stagnated and declined.

In aquaculture, earthen pond-based semi-intensive culture systems – largely located in the western part of Kenya – are the most popular systems, with Nile tilapia and African catfish being the main freshwater cultured species, accounting for 93 percent of the total production between them .

Pond aquaculture gained popularity in the 1960s, after the government’s "Eat more Fish" campaign. By 1970, over 30,000 ponds were dug in the Western and Nyanza regions of Kenya, but production later declined due to most farmers abandoning the ponds. Between 1970 and 2006, aquaculture production ranged between 1,000 and 4,000 tonnes a year.

In a commitment to revitalise the economy, the Kenyan government introduced the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) between 2009 and 2013, in which suitable areas for pond construction were identified and mapped out. This included 9.5 million hectares, 40 million hectares, and 3.2 million hectares identified as having high, medium and low suitability respectively . The initiative caused the number of fish farmers to increase to 49,050, with an estimated 69,000 fish ponds. However, by 2015 the number of operational ponds had reduced to approximately 60,000, due to poor water retention capacity by the ponds in some regions, among other factors.

Cage fish farming, on the other hand, was introduced to Kenya in 1988 by the Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) , which was established by the Kenyan Government to promote meaningful development of the Lake Victoria region. Trials were undertaken at Dunga beach, in Kisumu County, and the first commercial farm established by Dominion Farm Limited in Siaya County in 2005. Initially triangular BOMOSA cages were used by farmers . However, following high escape levels and interference by fishermen, most farmers transitioned to bigger cylindrical or rectangular cages that could hold a lot more fish and provided room for better oxygen circulation.

© Lake Harvest Group

A closer look at pond culture

Over the years, pond-based fish farming has dominated the aquaculture sector, while cage and pen culture systems have been relatively scarce. This is because most pond-based aquaculture initiatives require relatively low levels of capital to establish and farmers can opt to fertilise their ponds to supplement the feeding, unlike in cages where farmers have to buy expensive formulated feeds. Pond operation levels are rated as small-, medium- or large-scale, depending on the number of ponds they operate.

Large-scale and medium-scale producers utilise a surface area of 4,000–80,000 m² (more than 13 ponds) and, between 601–3,999 m² (5 to 12 ponds) respectively. Meanwhile those who operate fewer than five ponds are classified as small-scale farmers, and operate mainly for household consumption purposes. In 2016, there were more than 60,000 ponds in Kenya, covering an approximate area of 1,800 ha. Most pond farmers stock three fish per m² of pond, which typically 1kg of fish per m² (Orina et al, 2018).

Margaret Mwema, founder of Laguna Aqua Farms , practices pond culture on half an acre and produces approximately 1.2 tonnes of fish annually.

“The advantage of pond farming is the durability of the ponds; the ponds also require small water administration and fish grow faster,” she says.

Site and location are also a major factor to consider for fish farmers to decide which method to engage in. James Mugo, owner of Ornamental Fish Aquafarm, practices pond culture on a 1-acre piece of land in Kirinyaga county. The major determinant for him to venture into pond culture over cage and RAS was the site. His farm holds 33 small units, focusing on production of fingerlings. He says the main advantage has been the good growth performance of the fingerlings. Compared to cages, ponds are also suitable for fingerling production, as cages would require very fine meshed nets, leading to a danger of low oxygen flows, which would be exacerbated by any biofouling. Equally, harsh conditions in exposed cage sites can lead to high mortality rates.

Despite the low initial capital required to start, pond farmers face a number of challenges – including environmental factors, fish diseases and lower production rates compared to cage farming. If not well managed, ponds undergo faster water quality deterioration, mainly due to excess fertiliser application or poor feeding practices. The ponds are also in danger of flooding, which destroys ponds and may wash away all the fish.

Mugo attests to this, saying: “One of the most memorable moments was when I experienced fish mortality due to poor water quality”.

Soil type and topography are other important considerations, as the wrong type of soil will lead to the ponds losing water, as experienced in the past where many pond farmers abandoned their ponds due to this challenge. It is essential to have a percentage of clay in the soil to prevent water from seeping through the pond. In areas where the soil is not suitable for earthen pond construction, pond farmers can use liners in order to retain the water. However, good quality pond liners are expensive, thus farmers who cannot afford it often use poor quality non-durable liners.

Additionally, poor pond construction leads to high maintenance costs and low durability, which not only affects production levels but also the overall cost of production. Some pond farmers have had to spend more money than initially planned to reconstruct their ponds, due to building them with the wrong slope and depth dimensions, for example.

According to Mwema, one of the major challenges is that: “it's difficult to monitor fish and conduct other operations like sampling compared to using other culture systems”.

© Hydro Victoria

Looking into cage culture

Since its introduction, cage fish farming has gained momentum in the Lake Victoria region and attracted both local investors and foreign ones, such as Victory Farms and Global Tilapia , a European-American Farm and a Chinese farm respectively, which are among the few cage fish farming enterprises that provide significant amounts of fish for the Kenyan population.

In 2017, there were approximately 3,000, but this has since doubled and there are now approximately 6,000 cages on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria, with the highest number located in Siaya County. The production capacity of these is projected to be over 10,000 tonnes – largely of Nile tilapia .

Cage fish farming has become attractive because it reduces pressure on land use and the fish are in their natural habitat, where there is natural exchange of water, high productivity, ease of harvesting and monitoring (Orina et al, 2018).

The initial cost of setting up cages is usually high, but the returns are rewarding because one can keep a large number of fish in a small area on the lake, with the carrying capacity ranging from between 60 to 250 fish/m³ and cage sizes ranging from 8 to 125 m³. Kenya’s total cage production was approximately 12 million kg of Nile tilapia per 8-month cycle. Cages hold multiple times the number of fish compared to ponds, where the stocking density is usually three fish per m² and in rare cases, six juveniles per m².

The high returns are a major attraction for farmers like Fredrick Juma – founder and managing director of Hydro Victoria Fish Hatchery Farm Ltd.

“I have 65 cages, with a stocking density of 40 fish per m³. I currently produce 18 tonnes of fish annually from the 38 cages that are currently operational,” he explains.

Juma mentions that some of the advantages of cage culture include “the high stocking density, access to clean water hence less management required, predictable harvests and planned marketing of fish on order.”

© Lake Harvest

However, he warns against stocking small fish in cages.

“Stocking post-fingerlings (of not less than 15 g) is paramount in cage culture, as they can be exposed and harsh environments.”

This indicates the need for land-based hatcheries and nurseries to keep the fingerlings until they reach a suitable size to be transferred to cages.

“The lessons learnt have been bitter, but worth all investments done in aquaculture, including setting up a hatchery due to sector gaps, inefficiency, conmanship, knowledge gaps and brokerage involved, so I positioned myself to the sector to transform challenges to opportunities,” he adds.

Roselinda Onditi, founder of Roevense Company Limited, says: “I prefer cages because they function like a community farming system, where cage farmers look out for each other in terms of security. There is always a guard to watch over the cages, unlike in pond farming where there are many instances of theft, when one is not around.”

Onditi has eight cages. Between them they currently produce 800 kg of fish annually, but she aims to increase this over time .

The major barriers to sustainable cage farming are the high initial investment costs, disease, resource use conflicts, and high cost of feeds – as most cage farmers import expensive high-quality feeds from other regions, since most locally produced feeds lack essential nutrients, minerals and additives.

Another major challenge is security, as most cage farmers have suffered from incursion by poachers who steal their fish or – in extreme cases – even steal the cages themselves. Environmental challenges include anoxia, where the fish lack oxygen due to thermal stratification of Lake Victoria, and storms can also cause massive fish kills.

“Farmers can lose over 40 percent of their juvenile fish due to storms, mortality and escapes,” notes Juma. “Other disadvantages include theft of fish from cages, poor access to quality feeds, inadequate access to fingerlings of the right size (eg 20 g tilapia) and threats from climate change effects, such as cyclic lake turnover events.”

Out of the 65 cages that he owns, 28 have not been stocked since 2020, he explains, due to the the poor security situation in Anyangi beach.

He has now resolved to sell the small cages to help mobilise resources for large circular cages, which are more secure and can support high stocking densities.

For Onditi, theft and predators – including birds – are the major challenges, therefore she uses cover nets to protect cages.

Water hyacinth also poses a danger for farmers’ boats when travelling to and from the cages. It also lowers the oxygen levels of the water and may carry predators.

Conclusions

The fisheries and aquaculture industries play a critical role in human livelihoods through food supply, employment creation and income generation. Although capture fisheries remain the dominant source of seafood in the Kenyan market, the maximum sustainable yields (MSY) for most rivers and lakes have been exceeded, leading to a declining output from these sources over the past five years. This has created an opportunity for sustainable aquaculture to bridge the widening gap between the limited supply and growing demand for fish in the market.

Pond and cage culture production capacities are yet to be fully exploited, hence the need for innovative and sustainable solutions, including climate-smart aquaculture practices to increase the production capacity. Sustainable and profitable pond-based aquaculture is ideal for farmers with sufficient access to land and water, but the system has several technical and functional challenges which in some cases has led to abandoning ponds that could otherwise be useful in creating employment and boosting fish production.

Pond aquaculture has a relatively low level of productivity, but it can be tripled by transitioning into intensive pond aquaculture (IPA) technology, which has been proven to work well in places like the USA. This can be achieved through incorporating aeration systems and removing waste frequently.

Despite Kenyan aquaculture production being predominantly based on semi-intensive culture systems, new farmers are investing heavily in intensive farming technologies like cage culture, RAS and aquaponics, which can be more productive and profitable than pond aquaculture.

The increasing number of cage farmers has brought with it a number of challenges that should be addressed in order to fully exploit this technology and create opportunities for further establishment of cage culture in inland waters such as rivers, ponds and reservoirs. More research is needed to gain economic information on cage performance, cage design and size and further aquaculture training to impart best management practices for fish farmers, which are currently lacking, leading to huge losses.

© Victory Farms

In order to protect local economies through improved business practices and to ensure the sustainability of lacustrine ecosystems, there is an urgent need for policy and regulations to guide cage investment, as the increasing number of cages on Lake Victoria creates a massive risk of diminishing water quality. Proper regulations for cage installation need to be put in place to protect breeding grounds and navigation routes, in consultation with all stakeholders to avoid conflicts between cage fish farmers and fishermen.

Lake Victoria is shared among three countries and management requires all three to come up with a trans-boundary and cross-border policy to address key issues. These include conflicting interests in a shared resource, the conservation of the aquatic resources and establishing the lake’s maximum carrying capacity.

Marine fish

New partnerships in the study of insect-based feed, fishmeal production surges 40 percent, the lutz report xenogens: a new frontier for aquatic conservation, how salmon cope with hydrogen sulphide in land-based fish farms, meet the farmer three catfish farms and counting..., new app 'kampi' set to revolutionise shrimp farm management, water quality, africa’s new, blue economy entrepreneurs prepare for launch, generation recirculation is it time to look beyond traditional biofilters in ras, researchers confirm ecosystem benefits of uk oyster farms, sustainability, new research initiative to mark 15 years of collaboration for sustainable aquaculture, successful €2.2 million funding round for nordic seafarm, pilot facility for novel gas-based animal feed opens.

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Use of Fish Farming Practices by the Fish Farmers

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• Research in Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries 7(3):565-576
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• Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University

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Fish Friendly Farming Case Essay

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The processes of industrialization and urbanization have a significant impact on the environment. Unfortunately, some animal and plant species turn extinct, and many become endangered. Governments have recently started to develop and implement regulations aimed at the preservation of natural resources. The case of Fish Friendly Farming explains how the principles of this environmental initiative allow protecting the farming lands successfully.

The Fish Friendly Farming (FFF) initiative was launched by Laurel Marcus to restore endangered fish species with the help of effective land management in Northern California. At the end of the twentieth century, “some of the creeks and rivers were already polluted by heavy sedimentation which smothers fish eggs” (Gundling 119). This happened because of the uncontrolled waste disposal and soil erosion on the farming lands. Thus, Marcus attempted to protect the environment and assist landowners by adopting the land management practices with a long-term beneficial effect.

As farmers wanted to keep their lands fertile and uncontaminated, they became interested in FFF and its potential advantages. Marcus aimed to develop this initiative in collaboration with both farmers and regulators, making a list of recommendations practical rather than bureaucratic. Based on these practices, the sustainability of agricultural lands was enhancing, which was favorable both for the landowners and investors. As modern equipment can identify the most productive tracts of farmlands, agricultural operations will show more transparency and facilitate the investment process further (Sykuta 65).

Thus, FFF guidelines helped farmers to prevent soil erosion and reduce pollution. When it concerned road repair and creek corridor restoration, farmers were provided with assistance and enough time to implement the project holistically. Furthermore, FFF makes the work of regulators much easier because it helped farmers to implement projects that correspond to the certification requirements.

Launching the program was challenging for FFF, but Marcus utilized her experience to realize this idea into practice. First of all, it was necessary to determine some common standards that would assure improvement of the conditions of endangered fish, trout, and salmon in particular. Another issue concerned the innovative nature of the reports about water pollution and fish quality provided by farmers as previously they were dealing with pesticides only.

As Marcus wanted to expand the implementation of this initiative to other areas, some other challenges were addressed. While Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino had similar geographic conditions and landscapes, Farm Conservation Plan Workbook was applicable for them. In other areas, the examination process and collaboration with local farmers was necessary to create another book with best practices applicable to those lands.

Collaboration and positive reinforcement culture in different parts of California marked FFF’s success. Moreover, word of mouth among farmers and peer pressure increased the involvement in this program. FFF viewed farmers as people with a vast amount of knowledge about the land and agricultural practices and those who were interested in supporting their lands fertile and farming productively.

Such an approach was contrasting to those of regulators’ who usually avoided involvement but simply wrote tickets. With Laurel’s expertise in the fisheries and biology areas and farmers experience in land management, both parties got mutual assistance and support to assure successful environmental improvement (Gundling 126). Furthermore, FFF established relationships with regulatory agencies to draw a holistic overview of the practices needed to maintain natural preservation and sustainability.

The case of FFF and its collaboration with farmers and regulatory agencies depicts an effective approach towards land management. The fundamental principle of this initiative assumes that trout and salmon are perfect indicators of ecosystem health. Along with pesticide control, water and fish examination allows farmers to build sustainable practices in their production environments based on the explicit guidelines and practices developed by FFF.

Works Cited

Gundling, Ernest. “Fish Friendly Farming: Water, Wine, and Fish – Sustainable Agriculture for a Thirsty World.” California Management Review, vol. 57, no. 1, 2014, pp. 117-132.

Sykuta, Michael E. “Big Data in Agriculture: Property Rights, Privacy and Competition in Ag Data Services.” International Food and Agribusiness Management Review , vol. 19, no. 1, 2016, pp. 57-74.

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Home — Essay Samples — Science — Fish — Salmon, The Farming

Salmon, The Farming

• Categories: Farm Fish

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Words: 3217 |

17 min read

Published: Feb 12, 2019

Words: 3217 | Pages: 7 | 17 min read

Table of contents

Farmed versus wild: the basics, animal welfare and fish husbandry, possible contaminants found in farmed salmon, farmed salmon’s effects on the commercial fishing industry, argued benefits of farmed over wild.

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Factors You Must Consider Before Starting a Fish Farming Business

Fish Farming is one of the main aquaculture farming practices of most farmers across the globe prefer because it is profitable and creates a better business opportunity. Making money in fish farming is easy but with a price! You have to be exceptionally careful when starting a fish farm and follow the right procedure which will make you succeed. Factors to consider before starting a fish farming business include all the circumstances, details, facts, determinants and influences that contribute to successful fish farming. Whether you are already into fish farming or still about to start a new one, this article will provide you with the prerequisites which will help you make more money and excel more than you ever expected. Before you start the business of fish farming, it is very important that you consider gaining enough knowledge because what you know will make you succeed and manage the business better. There are many online courses on fishery which can help you in the case, there are also fish farms where you can go and learn about fish farming in details. Learning from a professional farmer if preferred to online training because you can be able to ask questions on some certain issues and also see practically how everything is done from the feeding to the breeding, and more. No matter the extent of basic and detailed knowledge you have acquired on fish farming, you still have to put some circumstances that will contribute to better results into consideration. 

Ground Water Springs Surface runoff Rivers, streams or lakes Municipal Wells 3.    Physical Properties Of Water Water is the major essential to fish farming. Even a layman on the street knows that there is no survival for fish without water. The water we mean here is not just any type of water. Water used for fish farming MUST pass the physical properties which are important to the growth and production of healthy fishes. Qualities of water good for fish farming business include normal temperature and concentrations of suspended solids. Water quality, physical properties monitoring and management all contribute to general health and growth of all kinds and species of fishes available in the whole world.

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