Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 14 Jun 11;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Nearly half of the fish eaten around the world now comes from farms instead of the wild, with more foresight needed in China and other producers to limit the ecological impact, a study said on Tuesday.
With rising demand for fish and limited scope to step up the wild catch, aquaculture -- the raising of seafood in confined conditions -- is bound to maintain strong growth, said the report released in Washington and Bangkok.
The WorldFish Center, a non-governmental group that advocates reducing hunger through sustainable fishing, and environmental organization Conservation International found that 47 percent of food fish came from aquaculture in 2008.
The study said that China alone accounted for 61 percent of the world's aquaculture -- a significant part of it carp, which is highly demanding in resources -- and Asia as a whole for some 90 percent.
Aquaculture has long been controversial, with some environmentalists concerned about the pollution to coastal areas.
But the study argued that aquaculture was not as destructive as raising livestock such as cattle and pigs, which places severe strains on land and water use and is a major source of climate change.
A vegetarian diet would be the healthiest for the environment, but the study said it was a simple fact that more people in the developing world were eating meat as they moved to cities.
"I think the likelihood for the demand for aquaculture products diminishing is very unlikely at this point," said Sebastian Troeng, vice president for marine conservation at Conservation International.
"So what we need to figure out is, if this growth is continuing, how can we make sure that it is met in a way that doesn't put an undue burden on the environment, so that best practices are used and species groups are cultured that don't have excessive impact," he said.
The study looked at the impact of aquaculture in areas including energy use, acidification and climate change.
Along with carp, the species with the greatest environmental impact include eel, salmon, shrimp and prawn as they are carnivorous, meaning that farms need fish feed -- and more energy -- from the outside.
On the other end of the spectrum, the farming of mussels and oysters -- along with seaweed -- has a lesser impact.
The study found wide variations between countries, giving hope that the sharing of best practices could limit impact on the environment.
In one striking comparison, the study said the environmental impact of shrimp and prawn farms in China would decline by 50 to 60 percent if they used the same energy levels as those in Thailand.
Aquaculture production has been growing by 8.4 percent since 1970 and is spreading to new areas such as Africa, the study said, which pointed to increasing demand for fish in Egypt and Nigeria since the bird flu crisis in the mid-2000s.
The report called for further study on how supermarket chains, particularly in emerging Asian nations, can improve environmental performance in the farmed fish they bring to consumers.
The study was released days after the United States -- a comparatively small player in aquaculture -- authorized guidelines that would open up some federal waters to fish farms.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said the United States had a $9 billion trade deficit in seafood and that a boost in aquaculture would both meet local demand and create jobs, including on the struggling Gulf Coast.
The plan was attacked by some environmentalists, who said it would bring waste perilously close to people and may depress market prices.
"The last thing we need is enormous ocean fish farms that can and do spread disease, allow for millions of fish to escape, kill off wild populations, jeopardize the tourism industry and further destroy the livelihood of local fishermen," advocacy group Food & Water Watch said.
Fish farming is answer to increasing global meat demands, says report
Conservation International says aquaculture has lower environmental impact than cattle, pig and poultry farming
Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk 14 Jun 11;
The world needs to farm more fish and algae to meet the world's growing demand for animal products, according to a report released on Tuesday by international NGO Conservation International.
The worldwide assessment concluded the environmental impact of aquaculture is lower than raising cattle, pigs or poultry so it should be expanded to alleviate the growing global food crisis.
"Aquaculture is most likely to meet the growing demand for animal products with the least demand on ecosystems," said Sebastian Troëng of Conservation International. "It would be better still if more people became vegetarian, but that looks unlikely."
The report was co-written with the WorldFish Centre – which advocates sustainable aquaculture – as a response to the precipitous decline in word fish stocks.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that over 84% of the world's fisheries are either depleted, over- or fully exploited, which means that wild fish in oceans are too weak to meet the growing needs of an expanding, increasingly affluent global population.
Fish farming in ponds, lakes, rivers and coastal waters is increasingly used to fill the gap – it is overtake wild-caught fish produce this year – particularly in Asia. The world's most crowded continent accounts for 91% of aquacultural production with the vast majority – about two-thirds – in China. This trend is expected to continue.
"China, India and the rest of Asia with their growing middle classes are where we can expect demand for fish to rise most significantly," said co-author Mike Phillips, a senior scientist at WorldFish. "Current trends indicate that the majority of the increase in global production will come from south and south-east Asia, with a continued drive by major producersuch as China and Vietnam towards export to Europea and north America."
The report says fish farming can have environmental benefits if done sustainably. Fish process energy more efficiently than mammals such as cows and pigs because they are cold-blooded (so less calories are needed for warming themselves) and live in water (so relatively more of the body converts to muscle than bone). The authors say that for each kilogram of protein from beef, a cow needs to be fed the equivalent of 61kg of grain, for pork, a pig needs 38kg, but for fish it is just 13kg of grain.
In addition, says the report, aquaculture emits less phosophorous, nitrogen and greenhouse gases than livestock farms.
However, it warns farming can have a greater negative impact if it focuses on carnivorous fish such as eel and salmon, or on shrimps and prawns, which require more temperature control. There is a lower impact from herbivorous fish, or better still seaweed, mussels, oysters and molluscs.
Fish farms have also been blamed for pollution and genetic contamination of wild stocks.
The report says 73% of salmon, 90% of carp and 99% of seaweed consumed worldwide is produced with aquaculture. The authors predict worldwide production will rise from 52.6m tonnes in 2008 to between 79m and 110m tonnes by 2030. However, environmental constraints could slow growth in China due to shortages of land and water and increased competition for energy and feed.
To improve the industry, they suggest greater monitoring, technological innovation and policy support. Mass production of microalgae – which is thought to be approaching commercial stage – is thought to have enormous potential for efficiency gains because it could replace fish feed and fish oil.
