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Rachel Lehmann-Haupt

Senior Editor, TED Books, TED Books


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    Jan 3 2013: The issue of fish farming is interesting... what makes a sustainable fish farm v. one that is bad for the environment?
    • Jan 3 2013: There are lots of ways a fish farm can be unsustainable. With salmon farms, they often have 500,000-750,000 fish in an offshore pen. Due to the crowding, they have to be administered antibiotics, sometimes very high levels. These, along with the fecal matter, kill everything around them. They are often Atlantic salmon being farmed in the Pacific, so if they escape and mix with wild stock, or their sea lice get on wild salmon, they can spread disease. As well, three pounds of wild caught herring and sardines are made into feed to produce one pound of farmed salmon. In regions these forage fish are being overfished, the entire eco-system could collapse. Also, shrimp farms are often very problematic as they pollute coastlines, and often times mangroves or important estuary areas are destroyed to farm them. As well, they can get really overcrowded and filthy. I think people wouldn't want to eat shrimp farmed abroad if they knew the details. So fish farms that are closed systems, so they don't pollute local waterways, feed fish a vegetarian diet, or a very low ration of wild caught fish to farmed fish, and don't overcrowd and use antibiotics are considered much more sustainable. Oyster, mussel and clam farms are in bays and estuaries, but these are actually very good for the environment as they work as filters to clean the bays. And, as we learned from Hurricane Sandy, they might have helped protect NYC and New Jersey from the storms.


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