Frustration with Obama admin
Marine advocates, who expected the Obama administration to be more friendly to their cause, have been frustrated that Lubchenco and the National Marine Fisheries Service have not taken a more active position on offshore aquaculture.
"It is very disturbing that the NMFS has not come out with a policy on offshore aquaculture," said Marianne Cufone, director of the fisheries program for Food and Water Watch. "We were anticipating to hear a different take on things."
Last week, Cufone and other activists, clad in tall chef's hats, marched around the Commerce Department building in downtown Washington, protesting the proposed Gulf of Mexico plan. The group threw out organic lollipops and chanted through a bullhorn: "Need more solutions, not more pollution! What do we want? Sustainable seafood! When do we want it? Now!"
Some Commerce employees looked down out of their windows to see what the commotion was about. Many NOAA employees are based at a different office building in Silver Spring, Md.
But given the uncertainty on NOAA's action on the gulf plan, Taylor's bill would pre-empt the agency. It would separate aquaculture from existing fishing regulations, forcing a national permitting plan if any offshore aquaculture were to move forward.
"As common sense indicates and Representative Taylor's bill makes abundantly clear, aquaculture is simply not fishing," said George Leonard, director of Ocean Conservancy's aquaculture program. "If passed, [the bill] will stop the dangerous piecemeal approach currently under way."
Reprinted from Greenwire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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6 Comments
Add CommentIt is highly unlikely that such fish farming will take the pressure off stocks of wild fish . Man is far too greedy to be reasonable unless forced to change by strong legislation and punishment...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed, the cheaper fish gets, the more we (I) will eat...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi practically know nothing about the topic, but it's an interesting debate. i think it'd likely take pressures off stocks of wild fish, if the economy has anything to say about it. knowing that foreign fishers own 80% of the american seafood market, it's easily deduced that they're doing something right (when considering profit margins and net costs). so if american companies began to use the fish farms, it'd drive the market value of fish down even further (something traditional boat fishers are already having a hard time competing with currently, it appears). when the value drops, the more expensive methods become irrational, and it would only become rational to fish in the wild as a supplier for rare "caught in the wild" delicacies. greed, i'm afraid, has absolutely nothing to do with the debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just wish I could trust government agencies more... Clearcutting forests and turning them into tree farms was always promoted as "best practices", we were told we could have the hydropower systems AND salmon. At least the dead zone in the Gulf is smaller this year, although do the agencies really know why? Convince me that we won't be damaging already damaged ecosystems and yes, I will buy farmed fish and seafoods. I already do, I just don't know how much damage (if any) the fish farms are doing... just farther away from home (or not yet in my backyard).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou don't think overfishing wild stocks would be far more detrimental?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCome on! Not again, factory farming in any way has only proved to be the wrong choice. When are we going to realize that we must clean-up and take care of our natural systems to feed us. I have read article after article about how bad farm/factory raised fish are for other countries and now that we have over fished, over polluted and over built or natural systems we think we can do this better. We can never do better than what natuer has been doing for thousands of years. I am not suggesting I have all the answers but we already know this is not the right choice. How about spending some money cleaning up and rebuilding the natural systems from the Mississippi drainage all the way into the gulf of Mexico, that would create thousands of jobs and the result would be a cleaner, healthier, more abundant natural ecosystem that will be around long after the "farm" goes out of business.
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