Chances are, the fish on your plate came not from a fisherman's net but a pen by the coast. Aquaculture is booming as catches in the wild dwindle, but so are the challenges posed by seafood farming.
Nirmal Ghosh Straits Times 17 Sep 11;
BANGKOK: Beneath the towering cliffs of a seaside national park in Thailand, a community of 40 farmers has been pioneering a new form of shrimp farming.
Their shrimps are raised in ponds that pack in just half the usual number - to reduce waste production. Chemical additives are also strenuously avoided.
Against the background of Asia's vast and rapidly expanding aquaculture industry, they are still a tiny minority, but they signal the way forward if the industry is to maintain the growth which has lifted millions of rural folk out of poverty - and keep up with the increasingly voracious demand for seafood worldwide.
Aquaculture - the farming of fish, shrimp and shellfish - has grown phenomenally. From 2006 to 2008, it went up at an annual rate of 11.4 per cent in the Asia-Pacific region. Total production in 2008 in the region was 46 million tonnes or 89 per cent of global output.
And demand can only grow in the future as increasingly wealthy - and health-conscious - consumers turn to fish instead of red meat as a main source of protein in their diets.
This hearty appetite for farmed fare in big markets such as China, Japan and Europe is also being kept up by the levelling off and predicted decline of wild caught or 'capture' seafood.
In the case of the Atlantic salmon, for instance, the contrast is stark. In 1982, 10,326 tonnes of wild salmon were caught, compared with 13,265 tonnes harvested from fish pens. In 2007, only 2,989 tonnes were caught in the wild, but commercial farms produced more than 1.4 million tonnes of the fish.
Ever wondered how much of the seafood, be it fish, shrimp or mussels, on your plate is wild 'catch of the day' and how much is from farms?
Globally, about 40 per cent comes from farms; in Asia the figure would be slightly more than 51 per cent, reckons Mr Miao Weimin, aquaculture officer with the the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's regional office in Bangkok.
The largest producer in this region by far is China, followed by India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.
In the Philippines, 12th in the world rankings, aquaculture accounts for close to half its fisheries output, totalling $5 billion last year. It also provides employment for more than a million Filipinos.
Even a relatively new player such as Malaysia has seen a surge: Five years ago, farmed fish made up just a tad over 10 per cent of its fish production; now it accounts for over a quarter, half of which is exported. Seafood farming reels in more than RM2 billion (S$805 million) annually, and the Fisheries Department hopes to push that to RM7 billion by 2015, with a shift from low-value cockles to more expensive grouper, snapper and sea bass.
The government is helping things along by providing land and roads for the private sector to build integrated zones for hatcheries, farms, processing plants and feed mills in rural areas. A 1,000ha farm coming up in Terengganu will produce 10,000 tonnes of shrimp when fully operational.
Ms Hasniah Othman, who heads the aquaculture unit in the Terengganu Fisheries Department, said the rising importance of farming was inevitable given the depletion of marine life along its coasts.
'We have to change the way we do things, and culture fish for food instead,' she said.
As fish and shrimp farms spring up to meet demand, they are also helping to provide jobs and reduce poverty in many parts of Asia.
'In Asia, it is still basically small-scale operations... providing 25 million to 30 million jobs for rural people,' said Mr Miao.
But the returns are good. With two harvests a year, a single milkfish cage generates a yearly income of around $12,000, said Ms Milagros Chavez, a fisherfolk leader in the Philippines' Batangas province. That is four years' salary for a minimum-wage earner in Manila.
The Philippines wants to ramp up production with the creation of more 'mariculture parks', which bundle farmers into cooperatives that benefit from economies of scale. There are now about 60 such parks nationwide, ranging in size from 100ha to 500ha.
But the growth of this increasingly vital industry has come with severe costs. And it faces serious challenges ahead.
One hurdle is that of environmental damage. Fish farming is not an unmitigated good that will substitute for reckless over-fishing of marine life in the wild.
Typically in coastal farms, fish are reared in large cages hanging from pontoons on the surface. Their faeces and uneaten food sink to the seabed, affecting its ecosystem. Coastal and inland waterways and soil have been polluted with waste, and contaminated with chemicals and antibiotics that flow from these farms.
Also, vast mangroves critical to coastal ecosystems have been destroyed to make way for shrimp ponds. Globally over the past five decades, up to 50 per cent of mangrove forests have been cleared. Almost half of those that remain have been seriously damaged.
Bangkok-based conservationist Don Macintosh said: 'In the late 1980s and 1990s, people did not value mangroves, so they thought converting them to shrimp ponds made sense; governments encouraged it.
'They did not realise that for every hectare of shrimp pond you need several hectares of mangroves.
'The shrimp farms literally polluted themselves. Waste was pumped out but it came right back.'
The industry paid when disease struck shrimp populations in the early 1990s, ruining many shrimp farmers and scaring away consumers.
And it is not just shrimp farms. Fish farms in China and the Philippines have also periodically suffered from mass die-offs as a result of over-stocking of ponds and other poor management practices.
Another area of concern is the food being given to farmed fish - this often comes from unsustainable fishing elsewhere.
'They basically vacuum clean the oceans to feed these fish,' said Professor Ronnie Glud, a marine biologist at Southern Danish University.
'The effect is to crash the populations of other fish species that aren't directly useful to us.'
There is concern too about antibiotic abuse, and what it may mean for consumers of the farmed products. One persistent fear is that to keep their stock alive, the farm operators are likely to be tempted to administer excessive levels of the drugs to keep them disease-free.
There is also worry over the level of dioxins and other contaminants in the food pellets used to feed the farmed fish.
Over the years, increasing consumer pressure and a web of best-practice regulations and trade standards has been forcing the industry to change, though examples like the sustainable shrimp farming group in Thailand are still few.
And with increasing demand, the pressure to produce will also increase. This in turn is likely to result in conflicts over scarce resources like water and land.
This month, for instance, 1,000 fishermen protested in the southern Thai town of Pattani, against a cockle farm owner who filed charges against local residents for taking cockles from a part of the sea that he 'owns'.
'The sea belongs to everyone,' the protesters chanted.
Across the world in Scotland, traditional wild salmon fishermen are at loggerheads with salmon farmers, contending that farm stocks contaminate wild stocks with parasites and pollution.
And with producers' fates tied to the global market, bilateral trade conflicts can also affect them. In 2003 when the United States slapped duties on catfish imports from Vietnam, costing thousands of catfish farmers their livelihoods, it was seen in Vietnam as naked protectionism.
But the most important priority today is food safety, said Mr Miao.
'Products have to meet standards for international trade. But it applies to local markets as well. There is a longer and longer list of environmental standards covering effluent discharge, pond water quality and so forth, and banned drugs and chemicals,' he explained.
'Today you can't just freely put a fish cage in a pond; you need a licence.'
Additional reporting by Carolyn Hong in Kuala Lumpur and Alastair McIndoe in Manila.
Thai shrimp farmers a model of fair trade
Straits Times 17 Sep 11;
BANGKOK: It has been a long learning curve for wiry, weather-beaten 49-year-old Somsak Maklai, a fisherman who turned to shrimp farming 14 years ago.
Those were heady days. He had some land of his own, and rented more. In two years he had 15 shrimp ponds at the edge of Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, just south of the Hua Hin seaside resort town.
His business boomed. But then, like those of thousands of others on the shrimp bandwagon, his stocks were hit by disease and his venture collapsed.
Mr Somsak knew he had to rethink the way he was doing business. Until then, he had taken advice only from the middlemen who bought his shrimp for the voracious markets of Bangkok and beyond.
Now, he turned to a friend who was a biologist, for a different kind of advice - how to climb back into the business with a sustainable 'less is more' approach.
'I had too many ponds,' he said. 'I began to reduce the number of ponds. I experimented, reducing the chemical and antibiotic inputs. I reduced the number of shrimp per pond, from 100,000 to 50,000. I started studying shrimp ecology. I also studied water and soil ecology.
'Before, I used a lot of additives - chlorine, formalin, and antibiotics mixed with the shrimp food. I stopped them all. The survival rate of the shrimp was not much different, and they grew bigger. The harvest cycle was almost the same, three to four months. There was less hard work and less stress, because there were fewer indicators to check constantly.'
He makes sure to drain the pond after each harvest and let it dry out for 15 days before pumping in fresh water from underground sources. He adds only Eco Marine - fat white tablets that enhance ammonia and waste absorption and help in pathogen control.
For Mr Somsak, the investment is lower and the returns not very different from the more intensive shrimp farms'. With his three production ponds, he nets up to 1.5 million baht (S$61,000) a year.
He has since organised a 40-strong group of shrimp farmers who have all switched to sustainable farming and signed a contract to sell directly to a buyer in Britain.
The community complies with a list of protocols that qualifies it for a 'fair trade' label. The farmers decide the price of their shrimp by consensus and negotiate on a yearly basis with their purchaser.
The community also decides on zoning. Unlike in many other places where competition over land use has created friction and controversy, there is no indiscriminate conversion of rice fields for shrimp cultivation.
The Thai government has sent officials to learn from Mr Somsak's group, and Thailand's National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards is framing national standards for certifying 'bio-shrimp' farms.
'I am proud of what we have done here,' said Mr Somsak. 'And I feel much better that consumers don't have to worry about eating my shrimp.'
World's largest producer set to scale up supply
Grace Ng, Straits Times 17 Sep 11;
BEIJING: China may already be the biggest fish in the world's aquaculture industry, but it is poised to get even larger.
What is driving it is the Chinese people's growing appetite for fish and delicacies such as abalone, with demand expected to rise by more than 25 per cent over the next decade.
Already the Chinese eat close to 60kg of seafood per person a year, making them the world's second-biggest consumers of fish after the Japanese.
To meet this ever-growing demand, China, the world's largest producer of farmed fish and aquatic products, needs to raise its production by at least a quarter to feed its 1.3 billion population.
This year, total production is expected to rise 2 per cent to 53.6 million tonnes. This means about 1.1 million tonnes more seafood in a year - enough to feed over 18,300 more Chinese people.
That is not all. China is catering to diners across the world as well. 'The amount of seafood it can produce has been growing at a faster rate than anything else - meat, cereals or vegetables - since the 1970s,' said Shandong-based aquaculture researcher Li Yanjing.
China's farm-grown prawns, shellfish, tilapia, eel and large yellow croaker fill supermarket shelves in Japan, South Korea and the United States - three of its largest markets. There, surging demand has already pushed export prices by as much as 38 per cent in the first three quarters of last year.
There is another reason for the growth of China's aquaculture sector: More than a decade ago, the government enforced a 'zero-growth' policy on fishing around China's coasts to protect fast-dwindling species from being driven to extinction.
Aquaculture became a national priority and flourished across the country, aided by local government subsidies and other support.
But it has not been smooth sailing. Over the years, there have been reports of fish bred in algae-infested ponds, overdosed with antibiotics or kept in water polluted with toxic waste. The cases prompted a Japanese ban on Chinese eel imports in 2005 and Walmart's recall of shipments of catfish treated with a banned antibiotic in 2007.
Even as Chinese officials go about trying to raise hygiene standards and find new ways of breeding healthier fish, what most farmers here worry about now is to keep supplying the world with cheap fish amid rising costs of production.
'Everything costs so much nowadays - electricity costs more, land rental has doubled in the past few years and our 15 workers are demanding more pay,' said Mr Chen Wenxi, 20, from Shuxi in Guangdong province, where he helps his uncle run a shrimp and tilapia farm. 'But demand for fish is still growing, so we will have to come up with new ways to mass produce fish cheaply.'
Turbot thrive in high-rise fish tanks
Straits Times 17 Sep 11;
KAMPERLAND (Netherlands): Mr Adri Bout trawled Dutch waters for 25 years until he recognised the ocean's limits. Now he raises 100 tonnes of turbot a year in a unique high-rise tank that has overcome some of farmed fishing's most persistent problems.
'I knew 20 years ago there is an end. When you keep fishing like this, the North Sea will be empty,' he said.
When he started out, Mr Bout knew nothing about aquaculture. Turning to neighbours and books for advice, he ran into headaches that plague enclosed farms like his: The fish suffered disease epidemics, he spent a fortune on energy to pump and heat water in his tanks, and he had to dispose of the fish waste without befouling the surrounding area.
'We did everything by the book. But the books were wrong,' he said.
Mr Bout, 55, represents a pioneer breed in an industry seen as increasingly crucial to the world's need for food stability while the oceans' capabilities are dwindling. And as the crisis of the oceans becomes clearer, the term 'sustainable farming' is gaining as much resonance for the sea as for land - and is just as difficult to achieve.
Nearly half the sea and freshwater fish on the market is grown in cages along coasts, in lakes, or in tanks on land.
In the West, aquaculture is the new agri-business. In 35 years, it has grown from a tiny speciality of small farmers to a largely corporate-controlled 55.7 million-tonne industry in 2009, the last year for which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has figures. The FAO said the world will need another 30 million tonnes a year within 20 years.
But it comes at an environmental cost. As the global business exploded, coastlines were destroyed to make way for open sea cages and the waste dirtied the waters for kilometres around. Like industrially grown cattle or chickens, some fish were raised in overcrowded and filthy tanks, wallowing in their own faeces.
Mr Bout was unusual in his willingness to lose vast sums of money with his trial-and-error methods - killing tens of thousands of fish in the process.
Three years ago, he took his turbot out of the standard metre-deep square concrete tank and put them in his experimental eight-tiered system. Each tier is a U-shaped fibreglass 'raceway' 64m long with 15cm of water and a swift current that sweeps away excrement and uneaten food pellets.
Mr Bout uses gravity to circulate the water eight times an hour - traditional farms change water once hourly - running it through cleansing filters each time it drops to the level below. He said his electricity costs are one-quarter of a similarly sized farm that uses standard tanks.
He also does not let organic waste rot - he oxidises it for plant fertiliser or food for shellfish.
He discovered that disease-spreading bacteria thrive in water above 16.5 deg C, a temperature turbot can tolerate but which is too cold for other ocean fish like bass or bream, which he once raised but abandoned. The fish grow more slowly in cool water but are free of disease, and Mr Bout said he has not used medication for eight years. He also found that with cleaner water the fish ate less, but grew faster.
Mr Bout 'is exceptional... an innovative thinker', said Ms Margreet van Vilsteren of the North Sea Foundation, which assesses the ecological impact of fish farms around the world. 'The last step, I think, that has to be taken is to control the food that is given to the fish.'
Mr Bout's system does not work with other kinds of saltwater fish which require warmer water to grow. Nor can it be used with salmon and other fish like cod which are raised in open net systems in the sea.
But new methods are continually being developed. The salmon industry in particular 'got a lot of things wrong. In recent years there has been a significant improvement', said Ms Dawn Purchase, of the British-based Marine Conservation Society.
Not long ago, salmon were raised in densely packed cages and heavily medicated. Now, vaccines administered individually to young fish have cut the need for antibiotics by 90 per cent, she said.
Producers also have learnt that reducing the density in the nets lowers stress. 'Stress affects the taste and quality of the flesh. It releases stress hormones.'
Environmentalists agree that feeding farmed fish remains the industry's most serious problem. Rather than ease the pressure on fishing, the need has grown for wild-caught fish to feed carnivorous high-value ones like salmon, bass and turbot.
Even mixing soya and other cereals into the feed, it takes 1.1kg of ocean fish - mainly small anchoveta - for each kilo of salmon.
Eventually, even this abundantly available fish will become scarce.
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