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Ocean FArming of Cod

2K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  juro 
#1 ·
I just read a short article in the Portland, OR "Oregonian" on plans to farm cod in the ocean off the US coast. Supposedly this will "relieve pressure on the world's fish stocks" and allow for "more, affordable and healthy fish for consumers". The folks pushing this idea are the same multinational companies that "blessed" us with large-scale salmon farming. They want the US Congress to pass laws and the US Marine Fisheries Service to make regulations for them to be able to make sections of the US coastal waters exclusively for these deep water fish farms.

The article also mentioned that the price of farmed salmon and "protests against farmed salmon" have "increased the pressure on cod" by commercial fishers. This stuff sounds like they are trying to get the US Congress to bless their cod farming operations and have Congress trump state regulators.

I don't trust these folks since they have not done what they claim with their salmon farming operations. What they have done with salmon farming quite clearly shows they don't care for much more than making large profits quickly.

OC,

This sounds like a PR campaign to get the US Congress to give them free reign. What do you know about this and what do you see as the ramifications of doing so?
 
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#2 ·
Cod Farming

OC and all,
Got a line on Unlimited Aquaculture Corp. They have a $5 Mill. venture to raise Black Cod in Hawaii, to the tune of 300 tons per year! They also plan a Halibut opperation there as well.
The Scottish Gov. and the Euro. Commission are trying to increase farmed Cod, in an effort to prop-up sagging natural stocks that are over fished. They want the "Farmed Fish" to increase to 4% per year, reachng a Euro. wide total of 700,000 tons in 2015! 25 to 30,000 tons comming from Scotland.
Cod will dischare up to 50% more waste than farmed Salmon.
Cod farming started in New Foundland in '85 and now boasts a large, island wide farming effort!
Open-Ocean Aquaculture opperations are on going in Cyprus, Canary Islands, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Philippines and China.
Want more? Go to Google and type in cod ocean farming.
Everyone should be up on this, I can not emphasize enough it's importance! Many areas in the U.S. are dealing with this, get involved!
Deerhawk
 
#3 ·
For all of us over 50 years old do you remember the films in grade school about nuke power and how it will save the world? I wish it would have but we all know what happened.

Industrial fish farming is the same BS. The talk of feeding the world is a lie. A great big lie, it can not be done for one simple reason though there are many like major disease and pollution. The major reason of concern is that it takes far more protein to intensively feed farm fish than what can be taken from our oceans. Hawaii black cod farm, 300 tons produced per year to market. Just that one farm alone will need as much as 6.6 million pounds of ocean forage fish per farm harvest to intensively feed those 300 tons. That's one farm and the worlds oceans are becoming full of fish farms of industrial size and application. What happens to the ocean wide higher food chain fish and mammals when our ocean looses it's middle to lower food chain? It takes a certain amount of bio mass to keep our oceans healthy. Fish of the higher order must have certain levels of protein available to survive. When we have bad ocean conditions like we had in the NW Pacific not many years ago the reason for poor returns of Salmon was because there was little in lower food chain to feed on. If we harvest the middle food chain at the ratio the industry needs then we will have similar conditions just no food available for Whales, Cod ,Stripers, Salmon, Tuna you name it and they will be in more trouble than at anytime in the history of the earth.

Maybe Nate can fill us in more on Bio Mass of forage fish.
 
#4 ·
Good point about the conversion ratio of feed to end product. The current aquaculture situation has an impact of over a million tons of sand eels used for feeding fish in pens (mixed with up to 60% oil, artificial coloring and flavoring agents) from the North Sea alone, with impacts proven to dramatically affect the regions cod population! How ironic.

It also affects everything from the smallest sea birds to the whales that inhabit the area. Most of these damaging impacts we never seem to understand until the damage is done, so the only reasonable approach for humans to take in these matters is one of safety and restraint.

There is simply no way people can raise cod better than mother nature.
 
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