December 23rd, 2009 by Hayley
Open Ocean Aquaculture (Source: Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc.)
The National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act 2009 has been introduced in the US to protect ocean health from risks of open ocean aquaculture.
There are currently no overarching policies or laws stipulating how this method of fish farming should be governed in America’s territorial waters, generally beyond three miles from the coastline.
This legislation establishes the first legally binding national standards for how fish farming should be conducted in the open ocean and offers a scientific based precautionary approach including environmental, socioeconomic and liability standards.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has said it will offer its own national aquaculture policy early in 2010.
Click here to read the full article.
Tags: Legislation, open ocean aquaculture, Sustainability
Categories: Policy & Management
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December 1st, 2009 by Michelle
WWF is in the process of forming an Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), similar to the existing Marine Stewardship Council. The ASC is expected to be operational by 2011 and will be responsible for working with independent, third party entities to certify farms that are in compliance with the standards for responsible aquaculture being developed by participants of the Aquaculture Dialogues.
Mussels - soon to be certified? (Source: Stock.xchng)
Over 2000 participants, including farmers, conservationists, academics and government officials are working towards developing standards for 12 species: shrimp, salmon, abalone, clams, mussels, scallops, oysters, Pangasius, tilapia, trout, Seriola and cobia. WWF believe the outcome of the dialogues will be the creation of the most credible standards for the aquaculture industry, which the ASC will implement.
Not everyone shares this view – according to an article on SeafoodSource 70 international non-government organisations from 5 countries expressed their opposition to the formation of the ASC in a letter to WWF. They believe the ASC will support industrial aquaculture and harm local environments and indigenous communities.
What do you think? Will the ASC encourage more sustainable aquaculture practises world wide or will it simply be another ‘eco-labelling’ system that will confuse consumers?
Tags: Environmental Assessment, Sustainability
Categories: Environmental Impacts, Policy & Management
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October 13th, 2009 by Hayley
Source: Stockxchng
Following on from the previous post, here is some more information on the use of fishmeal and fish oil in feeds.
The article Fish in – Fish out Ratios Explained, by Andrew Jackson, published in Aquaculture Europe Vol. 34 (3) September 2009, has been added to the Envirofinfish Library.
“One of the long continued debates in aquaculture is the use of fishmeal and fish oil in feeds and the amount of wild fish it takes to produce farmed fish. This debate has particularly raged around the use of fish oil and fish meal in salmon diets and a lot of different figures have been quoted for the number of tonnes of wild fish it takes to produce a tonne of farmed salmon (FIFO ratio). These quoted figures range from 3:1 to 10:1; the most recent figure published comes from Tacon & Metian (2008) who gave the figure for salmon in 2006 as 4.9:1, meaning it takes 4.9 tonnes of wild fish to produce 1 tonne of salmon.”
Click here to read more by viewing the whole article. The document is also available from the Library menu.
Tags: Fish Oil, Fishmeal, Salmon, Wild Fish
Categories: Environmental Impacts
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