New Farming Technology Gets Approval From Sustainable Seafood Advocates
Although it’s quite delicious, finding seafood options that leave one with a clean conscience is becoming increasingly difficult for the average consumer.
Extreme over fishing of certain popular varieties of marine life, like tuna and salmon, has led to dangerously depleted populations and had a negative effect on natural consumption habits of other species.
“Aquaculture’s current heavy reliance on wild fish for feed carries substantial ecological risks,” Roz Naylor, a leading scholar on the subject at Stanford University’s Center for Environmental Science and Policy told TIME magazine. “Unless the industry finds alternatives to using pelagic fish to sustain fish farms, says Naylor, the aquaculture industry could end up depleting an essential food source for many other species in the marine food chain.”
Recent studies have also found that many types of farmed fish and shellfish are contain high levels of health threatening toxins, a direct result of the artificial antibiotics that must be used when seafood is harvested in cramped underwater pens where disease can spread like wildfire.
Seeking out wild caught and responsibly farmed seafood can be time consuming and costly, and many have considered simply giving up on certain types of fish altogether.
However, a new aquaculture technology developed by Rochester, Wash.-based AquaSeed Corp. for safely farming fish has recently caught the attention of the sustainable seafood movement, and might provide a solution to this complicated debate.
Scientific American reports:
AquaSeed’s salmon are grown in land-based, freshwater tanks ranging in size from 60 centimeters to 15 meters wide depending on the salmon’s developmental stage. Containment tanks prevent escapes and problems with sea lice infestation that have plagued open-net ocean pen operations. Also, a high-end salmon feed and selective breeding has helped minimize fishmeal use, reducing the ratio of pounds of wild feed fish to produce pounds of farmed fish to 1.1 to one—a number AquaSeed owner Per Heggelund says he expects to whittle further.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, which is one of the most vocal advocates of sustainable seafood, and has been historically opposed to unsafe farming practices, made an unprecedented decision to endorse this new method, which is currently being used for farming Pacific coho salmon, a species that is currently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
In addition to being better for the environment, and for the future of the fish themselves, responsibly farmed seafood is also better for the humans that consume it. Quality salmon is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, which help boost immunity and reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer and other ailments.
In an effort to bring more awareness to the connection between improved health and sustainable seafood production, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has recently launched the Super Green list, which includes seafood that meets the following three criteria:
- Low levels of contaminants (below 216 parts per billion [ppb] mercury and 11 ppb PCBs)
- The daily minimum of omega-3s (at least 250 milligrams per day [mg/d])*
- Classified as a Seafood Watch “Best Choice” (green)
The AquaSeed salmon, which will be sold under the SweetSpring label, is one of the first brands that enjoys a spot on this prestigious list.