One fish, two fish, no fish?

I have always loved fish, but recently I have been choosing smaller fish — such as anchovies and sardines — and staying clear of larger ocean fish; the combination of issues such as overfishing, questionable fish-farming practices and increasing mercury content has me pretty much convinced we need a better way.

After my recent tour of Troutdale Farm, I was happy to discover fish farming done in an exemplary and environmentally sustainable way.

I wondered why there weren’t more farms like Troutdale getting fish to local markets. So I called Chuck Hicks, an aquaculture specialist who started his research program in 2002 at Lincoln University.

“The buzz word these days is sustainable,” he said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “are interested in sustainable aquaculture. They are pushing it as a high priority because demand is high. We import more than $8 billion in seafood products annually.”

Sustainable farming means you don’t pollute the waters, he said. But “many of these Asian farms are raising fish in caged systems in polluted waters,” a good reason to ask the chef or market manager where the fish comes from before you buy it, he said.

Still, knowing where the fish is from won’t necessarily reveal if it comes from polluted cage systems, he said. “The FDA doesn’t check those fish.”

While fish farming must be environmentally sustainable, it “also needs to be economically sustainable for the farmers,” he said. “The catfish industry in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana has been hurt by substitute products raised in Vietnam and China,” but this isn’t what’s keeping Missourians from the business.

“The need is certainly there, and there are excellent marketing opportunities in St. Louis and Kansas City,” Hicks said, “but the infrastructure is not developed in Missouri,” and unlike other food crops, fish are regulated by multiple agencies. “They are regulated by the Department of Natural Resources, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Conservation” and by local laws. The rules for processing fish are very stringent and require lots of paperwork, he said. “I think it’s a lot easier to sell live fish for stocking ponds,” which is what most Missouri fish farmers do. With only about 10 well-established fish farmers in the state, fewer than a handful process their fish for market, he said.

Yet, pound for pound, fish use less water than farm animals, and “they are also the most efficient converters of food,” he said.

Researchers at Lincoln and, more recently, at the University of Missouri are working on ways to farm both fish and freshwater shrimp. Ray Wright is successfully farming seasonal freshwater prawns at Bradford Research Center. Hicks is working on ways to farm fish from the native sunfish, such as crappie, and largemouth and smallmouth bass. He and his crew have developed methods to raise a strain of bluegill and hybrid sunfish that can reach market size within 18 months and are working on a domesticated crappie for food production. A domesticated fish must also be sterile, he said, so it cannot reproduce if it escapes into the wild fish population.

The challenges are many. Fish farmers need support from university researchers and veterinarians; must have the mechanical ability to raise and process the fish; and they must persuade banks to lend them money for these enterprises.

It seems like a good investment, as Americans eat more fish every year.

“Europeans eat 48 pounds of fish per person every year; in the United States, that figure is closer to 16 pounds,” he said. Consumption keeps going up mainly for health reasons — the Omega 3 factor.

Meantime, I eat the local trout and I carry my little card from montereybayaquariam.org when I go to a restaurant or supermarket to make “sustainable” seafood choices.

I’m hoping we develop and support more healthy, economically sustainable ways to farm fish, so my grandchildren will also be able to savor seafood.
(from the Columbia Tribune article on Aug 2, 2011 by Marcia Vanderlip)