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Comment by hcarvalhoalves | Hacker News Reader

I attribute the tragedy to the fact we farm the soil for ages, grow cattle for as much as long, but fishing was always considered cheap, given the sheer size of the ocean (we're far past the regeneration point), when in fact, fish has the biggest potential of all for intensive farming.

Fish farming already is a booming industry in some countries, and the tendency is to double in the next decade. There's a lot to improve yet, specially on small scale and associated with hydroponics, only now we are seeing research into that. If you want to invest, this a good area to put your money.

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It's worth noting that, in the United States a at least, there is a strong anti-farmed fish movement coming from the environmentalist community. They like to point out all of the damage that fish farming does to a local ecology without acknowledging the much greater damage that catching wild fish does. As a result, there is a lot of hesitation among some consumers to purchase farmed fish.

The objection is basically this: the desirable fish to farm are mostly meat-eaters. To feed these fish, large quantities of random fish are driftnetted and fed to the fish farms. That is, fish farms are converting 10 or 100 pounds of bait fish into one pound of marketable fish. This method of farming fish WORSENS the ocean depletion problem, it doesn't improve it. It would actually be better to simply fish for tuna directly.

There are objections to farmed salmon. Not even the most hard core environmentalist cares about farmed tilapia or catfish.

If you want an environmentally friendly wild fish, I'd recommend Mahi Mahi. They are the rats of the ocean. There are times when you can't get away from them.

These farmers are exploiting the higher margins of rare species, not scale, otherwise they would be looking after the highly productive species. Regulation would be enough to change the industry.

It's no different than cattle. We're used to red meat but it's actually a wasteful industry that has a huge impact on ecology. We only keep raising cattle because it sells for a premium (red meat is the most expensive source of protein).

The impact of fish farmers that grow carnivore fish is comparable to the impact of destroying native land to farm soy/corn used to feed cattle. We just got used to it. There are other ways though.

I've been in sea fish farms and I'm a spearfisher hobbyst myself.

Beyond the notion that fish farms are a sustainable source of fish meat, the fact is that fish farming needs a fodder supply to feed the fish. Fish eat fish, remember? This means in its majority the fodder produced nowadays comes from wild fish, probably a cheaper one to catch than de one in the farming nets. So wild fish still needs to be catched.

But it's even worse than that. Much worse... In order to grow fish in the farming nets the fish needs to eat much more than its weight in order to grow a little,just like any other animal. This means that it is much more ecological for us to eat the fish that is processed to make fish flour (fodder) than eat the fish that comes from fish farms.

What a nonsense isn't it? But still, we want tuna...

> Beyond the notion that fish farms are a sustainable source of fish meat, the fact is that fish farming needs a fodder supply to feed the fish.

This is not the only model. There are fish, specially freshwater, you can feed on algae and micro crustaceans, which in turn consume organic waste from traditional farming. That's where research is going into, and where fish farming is more promising, not the sea net model.

Tilapia is produced in large scale this way quite successfully, and is a desirable meat that sells for a good price here in Brazil.

Why is farming superior to properly managed wild fisheries? Over fishing is the problem. I don't see farming as the obvious solution. Farmed fish are loaded with toxins, as I understand it. The pollution is also a problem.

Even farming cattle in the way we do it is not really sustainable. There is a strong case to be made that hunted venison should be a staple meat at grocery stores. There is also a strong argument that a lot of farmland should be reverted to bison range and hunted for sale.

> Why is farming superior to properly managed wild fisheries? Over fishing is the problem.

... and over fishing occurs because management of wild stock is clearly not working.

Plus, there's a lot of waste in the chain that is diminished on fish farming.

> Farmed fish are loaded with toxins, as I understand it. The pollution is also a problem.

The toxins in farmed fish, mainly in salmon, are just a reflex of the toxins everywhere in the habitat (pesticides, untreated sewage), bad methods (fish fed with chicken waste) and lack of regulation. It's a non-issue where they don't crap on their own food and do it right (Chilean salmon, for instance).

> Even farming cattle in the way we do it is not really sustainable.

I agree. But the sad truth is that beef and bacon sells, and the planet would be devoid of mammals by tomorrow morning if we switched overnight to hunting game. Human population only got to the current size exactly because we raise cattle (among other things).

On top of that, there are ways to farm native species inside their own habitat, which helps bringing the population levels back to normal, like in your Buffalo example.

> management of wild stock is clearly not working

So fix it. If the USN blew a few ships in treaty violation out of the water things would change quickly.

You can find projections on the web so I'm not going to link here, but even if fishing got 100% regulated we would be past the capacity for the next years (other things factored in, as coastal pollution, desertification of corals and global warming).

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