Forage Fish: challenged to support aquafarming and the marine ecosystem balance

In previous posts I have referred to the challenges and potential of aquafarming. While it holds considerable promise in meeting the commercial demand for seafood, it is an industry in its infancy and is experiencing its technological growing pains as it addresses issues from parasite control to pollution from the waste products of concentrated, confined fish populations.

Another challenge cited in a recent issue of Annual Review of Environment and Resources has to do with the feeding of aquafarmed fish. Small to medium-size fish like anchovies, sardines, and mackerel - often referred to as forage fish - are being harvested in great numbers to feed poultry, pigs and other terrestrial animals. That puts enough pressure on the populations of forage fish as it is, but now there is the added pressure of supplying them to the growing aquafarm industry. This further deprives pelagic predators and many seabirds of a primary food source.

When I engage audiences in discussing the importance of apex predators like sharks, I often refer to the predator-prey pyramid. This hierarchy of survival is depicted as a pyramid because at the wide base of the pyramid are the plankton and small forage fish - available in large numbers because of a high reproductive rate - which serve as a foundation. And as you ascend up the pyramid to larger and larger predators, the pyramid narrows, representing nature's ability to control those populations through reduced reproductivity.

All well and good but as we continue to harvest more and more forage fish, which are relatively easy to catch, we begin to undermine the foundations of that pyramid. This not only impacts nature's balance and reduces the forage fish populations and potentially the animals that feed on them, but it also affects commercial demand and the price of forage fish can increase - which hampers developing nations who rely on forage fish for food and to build aquafarming as a viable alternative to other negative fishing practices.

As we jockey resources in an attempt to fulfill our needs, we may ultimately have to address the 800-pound gorilla in the room that we have tried to ignore: 6.7 billion people and rising.

Thanksgiving 2007: Forward thinking for Nature's sake

On 11/12/07, RTSea wrote: As we in the U.S. approach our Thanksgiving holiday, I find myself thinking more about the challenges ahead than whatever bounty we have enjoyed over the past year. Today, I listened to a roundtable of respected journalists give their opinions as to whether corporations will truly embrace the necessary changes to address global warming. Their responses were not encouraging. Actions taken by individuals and corporations when it comes to climate change, must be the result of decisions based on long-term thinking, not short term. And that has always been a tremendous challenge - whether satisfying our personal finances or the needs of corporate shareholders.

There is no time like the present to re-orient our thinking when it comes to the long term demands of the environment. We cannot wait for some ecological disaster to occur and then we spring into action to save the day. Nature does not work like that. Think of Nature as one of those huge ocean liners. As it approaches port, to turn or slow down, the crew must initiate action many miles off shore. To wait until you see the dock only guarantees that there will be a tremendous crash.

While I do not accept all of the concepts behind the Gaia environmental theory, one concept I do see as valid is the fact that Nature will always seek a balance. It will do what it takes to try to continue to exist in some manner or another. And if that means the reduction or even extinction of a species - including humans - then so be it. So we must be conscious of what we are doing now as our actions will have a lasting legacy for years to come.

In regards to forward-thinking and the environment, Bill Clinton was recently quoted in Rolling Stone, "Think of this: As far as we can tell, the first Homo Sapiens rose up from the African savannah give or take 150,000 years ago. That means it took us 150,000 years to grow to our present population of 6.5 billion. Now all of a sudden, in the next forty-three years, we are going to go from 6.5 billion to 9 billion - at the very time we are facing climate change, resource depletion and real identity tensions all over the world. That is why I think more about fifty years from now than fifty days from now."