Magazine: Blue Revolution: the Promises and Pitfalls of Fish Farming

he town of Turners Falls, Massachusetts, use but its pollution, replicating the waste manage- on the Connecticut River about 150 miles ment practices of local dairy farmers who storehouse west of Boston, was one of the many small manure. Workers periodically scoop out waste from New England towns that thrived during the fish tanks and sell it as a nutrient-rich manure to Blue Revolution the Industrial Revolution at the turn of local corn and vegetable farmers. Tthe twentieth century. The textile factories and pulp A world away, on Phuket Island in southern mills of that era are long gone, but today the town is Thailand, aquaculture is having a very different part of another development that could have global impact. Not far from four-star resort hotels, shrimp- The Promises and Pitfalls of Fish Farming reverberations. This time, it is part of what might breeding ponds have blanketed the landscape. In the someday be called an integrated industrial revolution. village of Ao Goong (meaning Bay of Prawns), the One of its newer businesses, housed in a corrugated rural quiet has been displaced by a constant drone of steel building not far from the river, produces fish. generators circulating air into the ponds and pump- Aquafutures, as the name implies, is not a traditional ing out wastes. A generation ago, agriculture responded to the New England fishing enterprise of the kind that Unlike their contemporaries in Turners Falls, the launched its boats from the Massachusetts or Rhode people of Ao Goong have not welcomed this new challenge of rising population by achieving big Island coast during the country’s early history. business. The wastes from the ponds have been sim- Through the use of water recirculation technology, ply dumped on the ground, causing the villagers’ increases in crop yields—but at considerable cost the company—one of many in its fast-growing busi- coconut trees to turn brown and their well water to ness—is helping to radically change the way fish are go bad. They can no longer use the wells, and have to environmental and social stability. Now, as produced, and ultimately to determine what role had to haul in drinking water from somewhere else. agricultural productivity flattens while demand aquaculture will play in supplying food to the world. When the wastes from the cultivated shrimp were Inside this one-acre facility, amidst fish tanks, pro- redirected into the bay, wild shrimp were killed— continues to rise, high-tech fish farmers are cessing facilities, and support systems, Aquafutures’ destroying the traditional local economy. For genera- employees raise hybrid striped bass—a cross between tions, the villagers have made their living by fishing wading into the breach. But can they replicate white and striped bass. Shipped in as fingerlings that shrimp from the sea, but the arrival of commercial weigh 2 grams, the bass are kept in this secure envi- prawn farmers is putting them out of business. the successes of the Green Revolution without ronment for about 10 months during which they are As the people of Phuket Island have learned, the given high-protein feeds. Once they reach market- environmental and social costs of shrimp farming can repeating and compounding its disasters? size of about 800 grams, they are shipped to restau- be enormous. Shrimp is the most valuable commodi- rants and supermarkets. While this facility may seem ty being produced by the booming aquaculture indus- far removed from nature, it is in fact fairly well try, and arguably the most destructive. But it is not designed to mesh with the resource constraints of alone: a wide range of indiscriminate and poorly natural systems. planned fish farming operations are leaving their heavy by Anne Platt McGinn By using state-of-the-art recirculating technology, footprints—destabilizing coastal ecology, degrading with computers monitoring temperature, oxygen, farmland, and polluting drinking water supplies. and chemical levels, the plant can recirculate each The conundrum is that fish-farming, if properly liter of water 250 times before it is discharged. done, offers great advantages in resource-use effi- Although the process is energy-intensive, the electri- ciency over both traditional fishing and conventional cal costs are to some degree offset by the gains in agriculture—advantages the world can ill afford to water efficiency. High water demand is a major prob- squander in an era of impending food scarcity. lem for food production worldwide, whether in irri- Indeed, integrated fish and rice farming has formed gating agricultural land or in providing future habitat the backbone of traditional agriculture in Asia for ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN BATTLES for fish. Aquafutures has minimized not only its water centuries. As the world’s expanding human popula- ✦ WORLD•WATCH March/April 1998 11 tion drives up global demand for new food supplies, world today. One of the keys to their continued suc- water. Fish farming was viewed as a simple yet elegant not anticipating that the Blue Revolution would also the great potential of aquaculture, combined with cess is that nearly all the wastes are put to productive means of providing food security for growing popu- replay many of the most vexing problems the Green some of the horrendous ecological and human use, so the systems are largely self-sufficient and lations in developing countries. Simply by flooding Revolution had eventually encountered. Aid agencies impacts it has had so far, have created seemingly closed: the waste of one species becomes food for marginal lands and releasing easy-to-grow fish that funded research aimed at genetically modifying fish intractable tensions between its promoters and its another. In more open systems, unused nutrients most people could afford to buy, social planners pre- to resist disease, grow faster, taste better, and thrive critics. How that tension is resolved will go a long attract infestations of bacteria, insects, birds, and dicted, farmers in those countries could create a glob- in highly controlled environments. And, as had way toward determining how—or with what limita- other organisms, which upset the balance and deplete al revolution in food production. occurred with such developments in agriculture, tions—we will be able to eat in the future. the food supply needed by the fish. Indeed, in many ways, aquaculture is a more reli- yields increased dramatically. In 1993, researchers in In the polyculture pond, available nutrients are able source of protein than either traditional fishing the Philippines announced that they had successfully The Blue Revolution matched closely to the feeding habits of various fish. or farming. Compared to ocean fishing, which can be cultivated a strain of tilapia that grows 60 percent Silver carp and tilapia feed on phytoplankton (micro- disrupted when storms or territorial disputes turn faster than its wild cousin. World Bank officials called As far as is known, the earliest fish farming (or scopic plants), while bighead carp graze on zoo- boats back, fish farming is less dependent on the it the “aquatic chicken.” And in a 1995 report, the aquaculture) took place in China, where the common plankton (microscopic animals). Grass carp, wuchang weather, less dangerous, and less vulnerable to sea- World Bank referred to fish farming the “next great carp has been a staple food for millennia. A document fish, and common carp eat green fodder, while com- sonal ebbs. And while commercial livestock opera- leap on food production,” thanks to genetically called “Fish Culture Classic,” written by Fan Li near- mon carp, black carp, and mud carp forage in sedi- tions depend on a few dozen species of animals, the improved fish, increased inputs, and technological ly 25 centuries ago (in 460 B.C.), details numerous ments at the bottom of the pond. Species are thus number of species of fish that can be successfully manipulation of the growth cycle. experiments on the sizes of fish ponds, stocking rates, combined to maximize yields and minimize inputs, farmed runs to the thousands. Today, aquaculture constitutes one of the fastest and harvest yields. In rural inland areas, often on providing a valuable source of food and protein for As a source of animal protein, farmed fish are—in growing sectors in world food production. From 12.4 marginal lands, small carp ponds supplemented the local consumption. In a pond about two meters deep, a grain-limited world—a godsend. The estimated million tons in 1990, farmed fish production nearly output from farm crops for centuries; the ponds were for example, an experienced farmer may raise up to “grain feed conversion rates”—the amounts of rice or doubled to 23 million tons by 1996. For every 5 kilo- supplied with nutrients from an adjoining pig pen, or 10 tons of fish per hectare each year. wheat needed to produce a ton of product—are far grams of beef produced worldwide, there are now 2 from other animals, ducks, food preparation, or This sort of small-scale aquaculture has also been more economical for fish than for pork or beef and kilograms of farm-raised fish. Clearly, aquaculture will nightsoil. Several times a year, the ponds were long practiced by rural villages in Indonesia and on par with that of chicken. On average, whereas four play an increasingly prominent role in the world food cleaned out and the resulting rich bottom soil was India, using local fish varieties. During the early kilograms of grain are required for each kilogram of supplies, meat markets, and seafood production. applied to neighboring fields. twentieth century, Chinese immigrants brought their pork, and seven for each kilogram of beef, only two By no small coincidence, the explosion in aqua- When Emperor Lee came to power during the experience with polyculture to Thailand.

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