Planet over Profit

Most of us who eat seafood have probably assumed that the fish on our plates is caught by fishermen in one of the last places we still hunt for our food, the sea. However, it may surprise you that there is about a 50/50 chance that your fish comes from a farm rather than the wild. In fact, if current trends continue, it is much more likely that your fish will come from a farm in the very near future.

Worldwide aquaculture production has existed for many thousands of years in places like China where the traditional culture of carp has provided fish protein for the masses. Aquaculture includes everything from seaweed, shellfish, freshwater fish, and ocean finfish favorites (e.g. salmon). Today, aquaculture is the fastest growing form of food production on the planet and represents roughly 50% of global seafood supplies. By 2050, aquaculture is predicted to represent about 70% of global seafood supplies (FAO).

I have now worked on aquaculture sustainability issues for the past 8 years and one of the questions I am often asked is “why is aquaculture so bad?” The quick answer to this question is that aquaculture is not “bad” across the board. Farmed seafood is and will continue to be an important method of providing protein to our species’ ever-growing population. What is important to consider, however, is the intensity of production and the species produced. Global aquaculture production is actually dominated by freshwater fish (50% of production) and shellfish (30% of production)(FAO), which are relatively benign environmentally because these animals feed low on the food chain and require low inputs for production. Furthermore, the environmental impacts of culturing such species are less than those of agricultural protein production such as beef, chicken, and pork.

If you have ever heard that aquaculture is a bad thing, it because of some very bad apples that currently make up less than 12% of global production (FAO). It is the production of high value species like salmon and shrimp that have created these negative perceptions about aquaculture and their consumption should indeed be avoided. The culture of both these organisms has resulted in significant, scientifically documented environmental impacts such as: declines of wild salmon populations, destruction of mangrove habitat, loss of biodiversity, marine pollution from wastes and chemical use, and the killing of marine mammals to name but a few. This blog will cover the negative impacts of salmon and shrimp production as well as the culture of better species like tilapia and catfish in future posts. For now let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If done properly, aquaculture could be a very important and a sustainable means of nourishing our species with lean fish protein as our oceans recover from decades of over-exploitation.

January 20, 2009

In the News…….

Recently, President Barack Obama nominated Dr. Jane Lubchenco from Oregon State University to be the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the governing body for US fisheries resources. Dr. Jane Lubchenco is an environmental scientist and marine ecologist who is a teacher, researcher, and communicator of scientific knowledge. She is very well respected by the scientific and the conservation community and has published well over 100 scientific publications.

When I heard the news, I was struck by the opportunity that this presents for understanding some of the root causes of the shortcomings of fisheries mismanagement in the United States. Today we are faced with trying to heal a wounded ocean as over 85% of global fisheries are fished at or over capacity. We have yet to recognize that we have failed to deal with the complexities of the ocean in our fisheries management plans and we seem to forget the fish abundance of the not so distant past. For example, explorers’ ships in the Northeast of North America (1500-1600) reported getting stuck in schools of cod and were able to drop a bucket and bring it up full of fish. Perhaps these reports are over-exaggerated, but the point is that fisheries have declined steadily on a global scale since industrial fishing began. I would argue that the biggest cause of fisheries collapses and declines has been the triumph of politics and economics over science. Let’s remember that NOAA falls under the Department of Commerce and, therefore, has an economic mandate above all other considerations. Politicians love to tout their worthiness through the vehicle of economic growth. However, when you are dealing with a finite supply such as fisheries, how can you have infinite growth? Something has to give eventually. I have often wondered whether or not the problems of poor fisheries returns are the result of the system that controls their management or the result of the people in charge of the system itself.

I have never heard of such a world-class scientist being appointed to such a prominent fisheries management/political position and I am fascinated to watch how things will unfold. As someone who has now worked in the environmental community for the past seven years, I have experienced tremendous frustration with how governments approach environmental issues and treat science that is counter to their political agenda (e.g. sea lice science in British Columbia, global warming, etc). My hope is that with Dr. Lubchenco at the helm of NOAA we will have the best opportunity to date to find out what the problem has really been.

Below is an article originally published in 2005. The sea lice debate still rages on in British Columbia and other areas where salmon are farmed. More will be discussed in future postings.

The Story of the Salmon Louse – originally published in BC Naturalist Magazine in 2005

Sea lice are a marine parasite of Pacific salmon. In British Columbia, two species infect salmon at measurable levels. Caligus clemensii, a species that infects numerous fish in coastal marine waters including salmon, sticklebacks, and herring, and Lepeoptheirus salmonis, a more specialized parasite that is essentially only a parasite of salmonids. Lepeoptheirus salmonis, or the salmon louse, is three times the size of Caligus clemensii and has more pronounced effects on salmon. Sea lice have a complex life cycle that consists of five phases (free living, infective, attached feeding, and mobile feeding (pre-adult and adult) and numerous developmental stages.

One of the key characteristics of the relationship between parasites and hosts is the state of dynamic balance that exists between them. Without this balance, parasites especially ones with lethal effects would drive their hosts and themselves to extinction. Nature has created this balance in the form of a never-ending dance. The dance results in a see-saw battle between the hosts trying to defend themselves against the parasites and the parasites trying to overcome the defenses of the host.

Sea lice begin their lives as free-living nauplii popping into existence like a popcorn kernal off of an eggstring protruding from the back of their mother. Depending on temperature free-living lice larvae moult over the next 8-14 days before becoming infective and seeking a host using a variety of light and chemical cues. Once salmon lice land on a salmon they insert an anchor, which holds them firmly attached to the salmon. The attached lice then begins feeding and developing through their developmental stages completing the lifecycle as mobile adult lice in approximately 30-40 days depending on temperature. A female salmon louse will live as long as eight months and produce up to ten pairs of eggstrings.

In the case of the salmon louse, they are picky about their host as they need a salmon in order to grow into full maturity and reproduce. Imagine how unlikely it would be for a sea lice larvae no bigger than a sesame seed to first land on a fish and then for it to be a salmon, yet this is the strategy that salmon lice employ and have been successful with over time. The most likely reason for the specific preference of the salmon louse is that it gives them a competitive advantage over other generalist species like Caligus clemensii.

The picture of how salmon lice interact with salmon is not complete. Anyone who likes to fish for salmon will know that it is not unusual to catch an adult salmon with salmon lice on it. Studies have shown that adult salmon are infected with salmon lice in the offshore regions and bring that infection to coastal marine areas when they return to spawn. However, sea lice are killed when adult salmon enter the rivers as they cannot survive in freshwater. Thus, the salmon louse has not traditionally had an overwintering host with the exception of a few overwintering coho and/or chinook salmon.

In contrast to the adult salmon, the question of what “normal” salmon lice levels are for young salmon is not well understood. Young salmon begin their ocean lives undertaking a spectacular migration through the coastal marine areas of British Columbia and out to the continental shelf. In the case of young pink and chum salmon, they enter coastal marine areas no bigger than a house key.

Previous to 2001, an outbreak of salmon lice had never been recorded on young pink and chum salmon. In 2001, the first of four salmon lice outbreaks over a five-year period was recorded in the Broughton Archipelago, an area home to the highest density of salmon farms on the B.C. coast. In the middle of these outbreaks pink salmon returns in the Broughton Archipelago experienced a dramatic decline that was unique to the area. This sequence of events touched off a firestorm of debate over whether or not salmon lice levels enhanced by salmon farms may be affecting the health of wild salmon populations.

How do salmon farms artificially enhance the natural levels of salmon lice and affect the natural balance between salmon lice and young salmon? There are several reasons. First, salmon farms represent the perfect habitat for salmon lice that has not been previously available to salmon lice, especially over the winter. Salmon farms contain a high-density population of relatively stationary hosts that are generally under higher stress levels. Higher stress equals a greater chance of being infected by disease or parasites.

Second, salmon farms use open-net pens in their operations. These large nets, which hold anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 salmon depending on lifestage, allow a free flow interaction between the farm environment and the surrounding marine ecosystem. Thus when adult Pacific salmon return to spawn in coastal marine areas it is likely that they will infect the salmon farms with salmon lice as they pass them on their way to their spawning rivers. Similarly, if a salmon lice infection on a farm persists throughout the winter then it will expose young migrating salmon to extremely high salmon lice levels as they pass by the farm on their way out to sea. One study from Norway found that a given farm could introduce over two billion lice larvae to the environment with a lice per farm fish level as low as three. Given their small size during migration, it is likely that young pink and chum salmon are particularly vulnerable to enhanced levels of salmon lice.

In British Columbia, the debate over the impacts of salmon farming rages on while low returns of pink salmon continue to show up in the Broughton Archipelago. While both the federal and provincial governments are preaching that everything is fine, it is clear that they care more about maintaining their legitimacy and getting re-elected than they do about addressing environmental issues. Now they are pushing ahead with the expansion of salmon farms despite the uncalculated risks posed to wild salmon through enhanced parasites and disease created by salmon farming. Every country that has had salmon farms has had serious problems with salmon lice both on the farmed salmon and the wild salmon migrating nearby. The difference between those countries and British Columbia is that we have significant populations of wild salmon to lose.

Hello and welcome to Planet over Profit. Our goal with this blog is to discuss the challenges of reconciling the economic system with our planet’s ecology. It is our hope that you will begin to see that environmental issues (global warming, pollution, etc.) are not about the details that you hear so much about (e.g. he said this, she said that), but rather they are about how our human system interacts with the planet’s system. In discussing the nature of conservation debates and the green movement, we hope to help you understand how you can really make a difference should you be compelled to do so. The major question facing us in these times is can we survive if we don’t respect the limits of the planet?

We don’t plan to bore you with academic debates here, rather we plan to use real world examples to keep you up to date on the latest happenings and how it affects your world. As we both work in the sustainable seafood movement, how to make green seafood choices will be a main focus of this blog. In this blog, you will see stories about happenings in the sustainable seafood movement including a history of the movement, detailed information about which seafood choices you should and should not eat and when you may be able to eat them again. We will also try to convey some very detailed information about how some of the seafood items that you like to eat are produced from first hand field reports and try to explore some of the big arguments and debates about what sustainability really means. We will do this under the microscope of seafood but I think that you will see that there are parallels for every other key debate facing our planet. Our sincere hope is that all these topics will lead you to become a more informed consumer about the threats facing our oceans and freshwater ecosystems and understand how, if you want to, you can make a big difference. We are both very excited about this initiative and encourage your feedback as we go along.