Fishy Business

By Terry McCarthy/Campbell River

Flying in a seaplane up the east coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia you see little but forested hills, a myriad of islands and the blue waters of the narrow channel that runs from Seattle to the Alaska Panhandle. As the plane drops over a ridge, a floating hut appears, anchored in the channel and nestled in a grid of net-covered pens. It all looks innocuous enough--no smoking chimneys, no visible plumes of discharge, no growling of chainsaws, not even a road.

This is Venture Point, 15 minutes northeast of Campbell River by air, one of 91 salmon farms licensed to operate in British Columbian waters. They produce some 50,000 tons of salmon a year, most of it destined for the U.S. market. Young men work their way along the floating walkways around the 10,000-sq.-ft. pens, tossing brown food pellets that are met by a swirl of fish. In these 12 pens, there are about 1 million salmon, each a delicious, silver-sided beauty, and when harvested in 18 months, they will fetch more than $10 million in retail sales.

What could be wrong with this picture? The farm-grown harvest is cheap, predictable and year-round. "A fillet of farmed salmon in your supermarket is fresher than a wild fish netted at sea that can take five to six days to get to harbor," says Odd Grydeland, 54, former president of the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association and an executive at Heritage Salmon, based in New Brunswick, B.C. Moreover, each farm-grown salmon means, in theory, one less fish taken from wild stocks that have been declining for decades. (Farm-raised fish now make up most of the fresh salmon sold in U.S. supermarkets.)

But the story isn't that simple. Salmon farming can be a dirty business. According to Otto Langer, 56, a biologist who worked 30 years for Canada's Department of Fisheries, a large salmon farm may pour as much liquid waste into the sea as a small city. Add to that the plagues of destructive sea lice that thrive in densely packed salmon pens and the schools of farm-grown fish that inevitably escape to the open sea, where they spread diseases and compete for food and breeding grounds with wild stocks.

Because salmon are voracious eaters of smaller species, it takes several pounds of wild fish, ground up into meal, to yield 1 lb. of farmed salmon--an exchange that depletes the world supply of protein. The diet of farmed salmon lacks the small, pink-colored krill that their wild cousins eat, so the flesh of farmed fish is gray; a synthetic version of astaxanthin, a naturally occurring pigment, is added to the feed.

Aquaculture--the commercial raising of fish--is being touted as a "blue revolution," a seagoing version of the Green Revolution that vastly multiplied agricultural output in underdeveloped countries. But just as the Green Revolution sparked concerns about its reliance on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, so has the blue revolution provoked a rebellion among scientists and environmentalists who fear that the industry, if left unregulated, could wreak havoc in oceans and estuaries. "We are not against aquaculture," says Langer, "but we are against the way it is being done now."

It has been several decades since there were enough fish in the sea to meet, on a sustainable basis, the growing worldwide demand for seafood--which accounts for 16% of global animal-protein intake, up from 14% in the early 1960s. About half the world's wild fisheries have been exhausted by overfishing. In the North Atlantic, one of the most depleted oceans, populations of popular fish (cod, flounder, haddock, hake and tuna) are just one-sixth of what they were a century ago. A European Union panel last week backed calls for a total ban on the fishing of cod in the North Atlantic and a moratorium on the fishing of haddock and whiting there.

Aquaculture was supposed to pick up the slack. It's already the world's fastest-growing food industry, with production increasing more than 10% a year. Farmed fish and shellfish supply 30% of all the seafood consumed worldwide today, up from 10% two decades ago.

But while the principles of aquaculture are generally accepted, experts fiercely debate which types of fish farming are safe to pursue. Says Andrew Fisk, 37, aquaculture coordinator for Maine's department of marine resources: "Aquaculturists used to be the good guys, and now they aren't, and there is a lot of anger on both sides."

On an eco-friendly scale, bivalves generally rate highest among the more than 220 species of fish and shellfish that are cultivated commercially. Mussels and oysters are filter-feeders that make the surrounding water cleaner, so small-scale farming of them is not usually harmful to the ecosystem. Farming of crayfish in China--the largest supplier to the U.S.--is a relatively low-maintenance, drug-free business carried out in rice paddies. Next come the vegetarian freshwater species that do not need large quantities of fish meal--carp, catfish and tilapia. At the bottom are salmon and shrimp, onetime luxury foods that, thanks to aquaculture, can be purchased around the world in any season at supermarket prices. Both species eat several pounds of fish meal to gain a pound of weight. And both create lots of waste.

To see fish farming at its worst, travel to Chile, where salmon farming has boomed in the past decade and generates $1 billion a year in export revenue. "A film of feed leftover made of fish oil, animal fat and transgenic soybean oil floats on the water around the salmon farms," says Ronald Pfeil, 67, a cattle farmer in Chile's remote Aysen region. "When the tide is low, the beaches stink."

Under international pressure, Chile introduced strict new regulations in January. But the problems surrounding fish farming are complex, and some are only dimly understood. Daniel Pauly, 55, a professor of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, has calculated that it takes 2 to 5 lbs. of anchovies, sardines, menhaden and the other oily fish that comprise fish meal to produce 1 lb. of farmed salmon, which he says makes no sense in a world trying to increase the amount of available protein. Kentucky State University biologist James Tidwell, 47, a former president of the World Aquaculture Society, points out, however, that wild salmon are bigger eaters than that--consuming at least 10 lbs. of fish to add 1 lb. in weight--and argues that harvesting large amounts of short-lived species like menhaden is no more harmful than mowing the lawn. "Fish-meal fish are nature's forage," he says. "Cropping them merely increases their productivity."

Disease is always a problem when fish are raised in close quarters. After a 1999 outbreak of infectious salmon anemia in fish farms in Scotland, all the farm-grown fish within 25 miles were slaughtered. A similar anemia outbreak in Maine two years ago led to the destruction of more than 2.5 million fish--and to federal insurance payouts totaling $16 million. "The more aquaculture there is," warns Callum Roberts, senior lecturer in marine conservation at the University of York in England, "the more disease there will be."

Some of the antibiotics that fish farmers give their stock to minimize disease pass easily into the surrounding environment, and some are highly toxic. Last year traces of the banned drug nitrofuran, which is dangerous to humans, were found by European Union inspectors in shrimp from Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. According to Wang Sihe, an expert with the Jiangsu Seawater Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese shrimp farms have mixed fish food with antibiotics and dumped it into fish ponds. Chloramphenicol, an antibiotic that can cause fatal anemia in humans, has also been used.

The fetid water that runs off shrimp farms is particularly damaging to the environment. Thailand, with 25,000 coastal shrimp farms, is the world's largest exporter of shrimp--$3 billion worth in 2001 alone. Through last June, Thailand accounted for 28% of the shrimp imported into the U.S. But this commerce is costly. Long strips of coastline south of Bangkok now look like powdery gray moonscapes. Shrimp farms can raise the salinity of the surrounding soil and water, poisoning the land for agriculture. Some flush their effluent into the sea, killing mangrove trees. Shrimp farming is also practiced in Brazil, India and Ecuador, and in the U.S. in Florida, South Carolina and Texas.

Parasite infestation is another chronic problem of high-density seafood farms. One of the most damaging organisms is the sea louse, which breeds by the millions in the vicinity of captive salmon. In 1989 Peter Mantle, who owns a wild salmon and sea-trout sport fishery in Delphi on the west coast of Ireland, discovered that young trout returning to his river from the ocean were covered with lice that were boring through the trouts' skin and feasting on their flesh. The sea lice were breeding near newly installed salmon farms in the inlet fed by his river. By the time the salmon farmers started dosing their pens with anti-sea-lice chemicals, the sea-trout fisheries of the west of Ireland were effectively dead. "Sea-trout fishing was sustainable and eco-friendly," says Mantle, "but the salmon farms killed it off within a decade."

In the long run, wild-fish stocks may face an even greater threat from captive fish escaping and competing with or consuming native fish, or cross-breeding with them and diluting the genes that have helped them survive. Fish escapes are common: nets are ripped open by predators or storms, fish in ponds get swept into channels by rainfall, others are released accidentally during transport. Bighead and silver carp that were introduced to China's plateau lakes in the 1950s have cleared those waters of whole species of indigenous fish. And Asian carp, which were introduced in Mississippi Delta catfish ponds to control parasites, escaped in the early 1990s and have migrated up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers to within 25 miles of Lake Michigan, threatening native fish with their voracious feeding habits.

Experts say aquaculture done right could easily feed the world without polluting it. A favored method of environmentalists is the hard-walled pen system that isolates the fish from the surrounding water in 40-ft.-deep tanks and catches their waste in the bottom. Even more secure are containment ponds built onshore into which seawater is pumped. Agrimarine Industries in Cedar, B.C., is testing a site with eight tanks 100 yds. from the sea and 40 ft. above it. But production costs are expected to be about $2.20 a fish--double what it costs to raise a salmon in a net pen.

Although salmon farming for decades has been a highly profitable industry and shows strong promise for the long term, profits are being squeezed today--making it more difficult for operators to adopt more expensive, eco-friendly methods. About 75% of salmon-farming firms are relatively small and privately held and don't make their finances public. The large, publicly held companies in the business--including Dutch food producer Nutreco Holdings NV and Norwegian seafood giants Fjord Seafood ASA, Stolt Sea Farm and Pan Fish ASA--are feeling the pinch. Pan Fish recently reported a quarterly operating loss of $18.5 million.

The Chinese, who have been farming fish for 2,000 years, pioneered a method in which nothing is wasted. Farmers dig ponds around rice paddies and feed carp in the ponds with weeds from the rice field. The silt from the ponds is used as fertilizer for the fields, and crabs are grown to eat pests. Some of those techniques are being adapted in Western fish farms. In Tuscaloosa, Ala., Dan Butterfield, 59, raises bass, carp, catfish and other species in the same pond; the sun and the catfish feces stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, which feeds the other species. His water stays relatively clean, with no need to discharge wastes. "I am probably the most environment-friendly fish farmer in the country," claims Butterfield, who figures he nets about $1,000 an acre each year on his 150 acres of ponds.

But these alternative techniques tend to be expensive and difficult to scale up, which make them a hard sell for U.S. fish farmers. "The challenge is to have the industry grow in a way that is both ecologically sensitive and sustainable," says Rebecca Goldburg, 44, a scientist who co-authored a report on the aquaculture industry last year for the Pew Oceans Commission. "But until the government steps in, there will be no incentive for the industry to act."

Boatmen who catch wild fish and shellfish are often more strictly regulated than seafood farmers, whose wholesome image has helped them resist government oversight. But after eight years of discussion, shrimp farmers around the world are considering adoption of a universal certification process that would require them to comply with standards on the siting of ponds, effluent treatment, the reduction of chemicals and disease management. In exchange, their products would be labeled eco-friendly. By 2004, labels indicating whether seafood is farmed or wild will become mandatory in the U.S. (though they won't be required on restaurant menus). Jason Clay, 51, a senior fellow at World Wildlife Fund who helped develop the standards, is optimistic that they will be accepted. "As the industry gets more competitive, those who survive will be those who do it better and cleaner," he says.

Except in Maine, there's little talk of certification systems among salmon farmers. But there are quiet moves to clean up the industry from within. "A lot of farms were badly run," admits Peter Sawchuk, 49, who has been farming salmon in British Columbia since 1989 for Marine Harvest and Agrimarine. "They were overfed, poorly sited and there was too much drugging. But now we are getting better. We are not in the business of destroying our farms."

Venture Point, near Vancouver Island, is something of a showcase. Underwater video cameras monitor the salmon feeding so that extra pellets are not added after the fish have stopped eating. And those pellets contain up to 60% soy meal instead of fish. Nutreco, the company that owns Venture Point, individually vaccinates young salmon, reducing the need for larger quantities of antibiotics later on. Venture Point was located in a narrow channel east of Vancouver Island to take advantage of powerful currents that prevent wastes from building up under the pens.

If techniques like those used at Venture Point are widely adopted, fish farming could become sustainable while remaining profitable. If methods don't change, either voluntarily or by government regulation, we may get plenty of fish and shrimp to eat--at least for a while--but lose the wild stocks they came from and the clear blue waters in which they once swam.

--With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York, Christobal Edwards/Santiago, Stefanie Friedhoff/Walpole, Maine, Helen Gibson/London, Mike Goettig/Kunming, Robert Horn/Bangkok, Frank Sikora/Birmingham and Jiang Xueqin/Wuxi

With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York, Christobal Edwards/Santiago, Stefanie Friedhoff/Walpole, Maine, Helen Gibson/London, Mike Goettig/Kunming, Robert Horn/Bangkok, Frank Sikora/Birmingham and Jiang Xueqin/Wuxi