The Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute—the scientific arm of SeaWorld—is currently planning to place an open-ocean aquaculture project in federal waters five miles off the coast of San Diego, California. If allowed to proceed, this project would be the largest open-water marine aquaculture facility in North America. A number of state and federal agencies are reviewing the Hubbs-SeaWorld project to determine whether it should move forward, including the Army Corps of Engineers. Unfortunately, right now, the Army Corps of Engineers is planning just one public hearing on this project – at Hubbs-SeaWorld's very own facility in San Diego!
Right now, there is simply not enough public information available about the project for it to be approved. We do know that similar endeavors elsewhere have caused problems for the marine environment and economies of coastal communities. From ocean pollution to the massive consumption of small prey fish, open ocean aquaculture projects around the world have often resulted in unemployment and reduced recreational opportunities. The potential problems from the Hubbs-SeaWorld project, one of unprecedented scale here in the U.S., are very troubling – tell the Army Corps of Engineers that you want a fair chance to review and comment on the proposed project.
Keep you're eye on "Ocean Grown,"
The New "Monsanto"
http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26991
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2 comments:
This is a total over reaction to what may be the only method that can sustainably address the looming global food crisis. And the first casualty will be seafood. Your group knows our oceans are being drained of food. Doctors tell us to eat more fish; it's good for the brain and good for the heart. It’s a very healthy source of protein. We crave for our weekly sushi fix. And increasingly so do our friends in China, India, the EU, and just about everywhere else in the developing world. Over one billion people rely on seafood as their source of protein. There is a demand supply gap now that will worsen in the future as our world’s population increases. More people will starve, more people will be malnourished. To meet this growing appetite, commercial fishermen are scooping up everything that's edible (and a lot of what's not). Couple that trend with the effects of global warming, and the situation has become so dire that some scientists think seafood stocks will totally collapse by 2048. Conventional aquaculture farming would seem the answer, but it has its own problems. Near and onshore armed fish can be lower in nutrients, and sometimes even dyed with color to appear edible. The farms themselves, being monocultures, can be havens for disease, so they are sometimes infused with prophylactic antibiotics, anti-parasitical and antifungal agents. Those contaminants and the concentration of animal waste make poorly monitored shoreline farms devastating to the environment.
BUT DEEP OPEN OCEAN AQUACULTURE (or what we call Free Range Fish Farming) is a viable method to reliably provide a sustainable supply of healthy, nutritious and delicious seafood without damaging our oceans and its stakeholders. Fish stock are cultivated & submerged far offshore in the open ocean and raised in strong & continuous flows of pristine open ocean waters that have not been impacted or influenced by land, near shore aquaculture or nearby open ocean aquaculture activity. And when sites are strategically located, negative social impact is either nonexistent or greatly minimized. Free Range Fish Farming is Plan A to feed a hungry world. There is no Plan B. It is not perfect (nothing is) but it's enormous upside favorably addresses hunger & malnutrition issues (primarily to developing countries) and is as needed as much as alternatives to fossil fuels, energy reduction, gas emissions, pollution and every other environmental concern our planet has today. Please use your influence to foster deep open aquaculture enterprises and be part of the solution it provides. Alternatively, our nation will grow to rely upon others to feed us just as we rely upon others for fuel.
Michael Albert
Open Blue Sea Farms
Then there is this POV;
Marine scientist calls for abstaining from seafood to save oceans
Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
June 08, 2009
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0608-hance_abstain_seafood.html
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