“We believe”, says Roy Crabtree
Seems that the man from NOAA has taken on a bit of an almost evangelical belief in fish farming.
“We believe aquaculture can be done in an environmentally responsible and safe way,” NOAA Fisheries regional administrator Roy Crabtree said Thursday. “If it’s done in an environmentally safe way, it will benefit the country.”
Completely aside from the fact that the scope of your job is to watch over fisheries and the fish, not decide what will or what will not benefit “the country”, I’m glad you are a believer, Mr. Crabtree, but not everyone is sold. Take the University of Hawaii and their little study about the impact of fish farms on wild fish, for instance. Sea lice, ugh.
The researchers found that infestation rates of sea lice dramatically increased in wild juvenile salmon migrating past salmon farms on their way to the open sea. The paper concluded that wild salmon fingerlings measuring two inches or less in length suffered increased mortality due to the sea lice infestations. “Sea-cage operations have no way of separating farmed animals from pathogens floating in the ocean. So once these pathogens penetrate the farms, the farms turn into pathogen incubators,” ( University of Hawaii Study Web Site )
Or the “educated opinion” expressed by the folks at Food And Water Watch:
Commercial fish farms can attract and concentrate parasites and disease, which may then spread to wild fish populations. Salmon farms in British Columbia have been tied to sea lice outbreaks in wild populations. Non-indigenous Atlantic salmon from existing fish farms have been found in the ocean and rivers from the Pacific Northwest to Alaska, which has serious implications for wild stocks ( Food and Water Watch Press Release )
Who is to say that anyone will do it in an environmentally safe way, and if that little stipulation isn’t met, what exactly will be the long lasting side effects of offshore fish pans?
Under the Gulf Council plan, federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico would be the first in the nation to be opened to aquaculture. ( Naples Daily News )
Umm, thanks all the same, but couldn’t you find some other area that so many people aren’t depending upon to make a living and pursue a way of life for you latest experiments? You might be sold, Mr. Crabtree, but how about resisting the impulse to sell the rest of us downriver on this issue?
By signing this bill, the President reaffirmed our commitment to protect America’s fisheries and keep our commercial and recreational fishing communities strong.
(The White House, press release January, 2007)
Maybe you should go back and re-read that Magnuson Stevens Act you are so quick to refer to when you are shutting down our fisheries, Mr. Crabtree. You might, upon careful re-reading, see that it also gives you a mandate to protect “the fisheries” and “fishing communities” as well as vested interests the fish.
According to Joe Hendrix of Sea Fish Mariculture in Houston, 457 cages (32 meter diameter) carrying 20 kg/cubic meter of fish could produce the entire annual commercial finfish catch of the Gulf, requiring a sea bottom area of only 800 hectares or about 2,000 acres. Of course you would not want to put the fish in a concentrated area, but would spread them out over the Gulf. The potential for offshore – aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico offers the US a way to offset its huge seafood trade deficit, and produce its own fish. The Texas aquaculture industry has great potential in the future helping the U.S. offset its seafood trade deficit ( www.thefishsite.com )
Oh, cool. Just 457 giant cages spread around the Gulf could replace the entire output of a whole industry. One company could produce the same amount of finfish that all the commercial fishermen now produce? Sounds like a huge bonanza for that company. Wonder what the downside would be to that?
Based on experience elsewhere, the practice of offshore aquaculture, combined with the influx of farmed fish imports, could threaten the economic wellbeing of the Gulf’s active fishing industries. For example, from 1992 to 2001, the value of the Alaskan salmon harvest plunged from $600 million to a bit more than $200 million, a drop of more than 60 percent. A similar price crash would devastate the U.S. Gulf of Mexico fishing industry, which in 2006 landed more than $41 million worth of cobia, pompano, grouper, and snapper, all valuable finfish. (http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1024-07.htm)
Does the name “Joe Hendrix” sound familiar to you? Do you wonder why the NMFS Gulf Council has decided that they should be the ones to regulate this industry as a “fishery” rather than get Congress, the EPA, or some other government agency involved?
Not to be a skeptic, or anything, but could it possibly relate to the fact that since 2002 Mr. Joe Hendrix Jr., the President of Gulf Mariculture of Houston, Texas, has been a full voting member of the Gulf Council?
Yes, I think maybe that could be it.
So the Gulf Council, in the face of strong opposition variously characterized as “public outcry” and “legal questions” decided to wait until January when maybe things will calm down a bit to again take up this matter.
The decision came after a key congressman questioned the Gulf Council’s authority to adopt the plan and after thousands of opponents sent letters and dozens unleashed a barrage of questions about the plan at public hearings this week in Mobile. ( Naples Daily News )
If you have any feelings about this plan, you should consider contacting your representatives on the Council and in Congress and asking them to speak up on your behalf. That’s what they are supposed to do for their constituents, last I knew.
“Your” Council members and Congressmen are here, drop them a line or give them a jingle:
