In conjunction with KBCS, we’re posting a transcript of Martha Baskin’s latest story. Listen to her radio story here:

With fish resources depleted worldwide, open water and offshore fish farming or aquaculture is seen by some as a way to increase fish production. Washington State has been a leading producer of aquaculture for over a century. But what are the impacts to wild fish resources and the environment?

Martha Baskin visited a fish farm on Bainbridge Island and tells us all about it:

Fort Ward, Bainbridge Island — American Gold Seafoods, a subsidiary of Icicle Seafoods, raises Atlantic salmon in a fish farm here. With fish resources depleted worldwide, open water and offshore fish farming is seen by some as a way to increase fish production. But it’s controversial.

American Gold Seafoods wouldn’t go on record for this story. By chance I meet an environmental educator, Cara Cruikshank, who lives near the farm. Together we pay a visit. Site manager Alec Coltus knows Cruikshank and answers basic questions.

“All the fish are raised in our hatcheries in Rochester, Wash. We bring about 1.5 million fish down here and stock our site,” Coltus says.

I ask what’s in the white bags of feed being unloaded.

“Fish meal. Sardines. Anchovies. Some land-based by-products. Soy. Chicken. Corn.”

And this has been going on for 20 years?

“Thirty-seven, no thirty-eight,” Coltus replies. A Norwegian company started the fish farm with a few test pens.

How many do you estimate you have today?

“We have 54 pens down here. Each pen holds anywhere from 20,000 to 32,000 fish,” Coltus says.

It’s the fecal waste produced by these penned Atlantic salmon that concerns Cruikshank the most. But the practice of feeding farmed fish wild fish ranks equally high. Cruikshank says the fish farm was originally sited on Bainbridge Island’s Rich Passage because of the strong current and good flush.

“So what these fish are doing is their waste is going right into that great flush. It’s carrying their waste all over the island. All over Puget Sound,” Cruikshank says. “And Puget Sound doesn’t flush well. It’s like a bathtub, as Christine Gregoire said.”

The salmon pens are to be relocated across Rich Passage to Clam Bay near Manchester. Residents recently convinced Kitsap County officials that heavy trucks going to and from the salmon farm were a hazard. Water pollution didn’t come up, says Cruikshank.

“No one really understands the extent of the problem coming from the few fish farms we have in Washington. It’s millions of pounds of waste annually,” Cruikshank says. “Untreated waste.”

Dr. Christopher Krembs, senior oceanographer of the Marine Monitoring Unit in the Department of Ecology’s Environment Assessment Program, monitors water quality. He says fecal matter and feed waste are factors in Puget Sound’s increase in nutrient concentration over the last 10 years. Nutrients foster algae growth. And when algae blooms die they attract bacteria to decompose it. “That takes oxygen,” Krembs says.

 

“What we found in Puget Sound is that concentrations in oxygen throughout the entire region are beginning to decline,” Krembs says. “So there’s a relation between the increase in nutrients and the decrease in oxygen.”

Nutrients aren’t bad by themselves, says Krembs, but their quantity and balance are. Fish farms can be compared to a fish tank. The art is to feed the fish only as much as they can eat within a few minutes.

 

   (Pictured: Algae bloom in Clark County, Wash.)

“You want to prevent any of the fish food sinking down to the bottom. Because when that happens you have water quality in your fish tank that is really bad,” he says. “So with fish aquaculture you have a similar situation.”

Krembs says raising fish in dense concentrations can also lead to disease. “Normally a school of fish swims and sort of changes the water that it’s swimming in all the time. But here you have them really incubating in a very narrow space.”

Does this mean the state should discontinue fish farming?

No, concludes Krembs. Instead it depends on how often the fish are fed, and how many cages and companies operate from one site. American Gold Seafoods will increase operations by 50 percent when it relocates from Bainbridge Island to Clam Bay.

Anne Mosness fished in Alaska for 28 years. We meet at Fisherman’s Terminal. She’s an organizer with the “Go Wild Campaign,” a nonprofit that works to save wild salmon. The campaign is firmly against fish farming. “I created the ‘Go Wild Campaign,’” she says, “because of my long history with fishing and the extraordinary health benefits of wild fish and the value of the small family fishing businesses to the economy along the coastlines of the country.”

Mosness regularly testifies before the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, which favor fish farming, also known as aquaculture, to replenish stock. NOAA held public hearings this spring about their goal to expand “sustainable aquaculture.” Mosness was there.

Of the issues that concern her most, one is the number of farmed salmon that escape.

“The salmon pens in Washington had an outbreak of hemmorhagic septicemia several winters ago. These open-sided cages are incapable of confining pollution and parasites and these pathogens or even the actual fish. They’re causing harm to wild species we’re obligated to protect under the public trust doctrine.” Mosness calls it a choice between feedlots or family farms. “And I think that’s the issue we need to look at. Are we replicating the worst problems of factory farms on land in our marine environment?”

 

  (Pictured: Visible effects of hemorrhagic septicemia)

Since 2005 there have been a number of national bills introduced into Congress which would allow ocean fish farming in federal waters. None have made it out of committee. We’ll continue to explore farmed vs. wild fish resources over the next few weeks. Are there sustainable options for consumers? Why does the country export as much seafood as it imports?

 

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OTHER FOOD FEATURES…

Sustainable Oceans, Sustainable Fish: Market strategies and consumer demand

 

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