Right from the Start

Ensuring a Responsible Future for Farming Fish in the United States

Ocean Conservancy Magazine, Spring 2009
Story by Catherine Fox

Half a mile off the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island, thirty feet below the Pacific Ocean's surface, a cage with fish-net walls sits firmly ensconced in the warm current, some 200 feet above the bottom. A futuristic looking column runs upward through the center; mooring lines going off in all directions anchor it to the sea floor. Save for this huge structure the size of a high school gym and the flashing swirl of thousands of five-pound fish circling inside, all is deepest blue. Soon the tasty delicacies, a local species of yellowtail, will be harvested, destined for dinner plates within 48 hours.

Kona Blue Water Farms in Hawaii, one of just a handful of US fish farms operating offshore in the open ocean, is the latest chapter in the long history of aquaculture, or "fish farming" as it's often called. Raising fish for food goes back some 4,000 years to the ancient Egyptians, who feasted on tilapia they grew themselves. Typically, most fish have been raised in freshwater ponds, holding tanks, or other enclosed areas on land. Only in recent history have fish farmers grown ocean species such as salmon in large-scale ocean fish farms near the shore, with considerable ecological cost but also increasingly competing for space with recreational activities and coastal development. Now, for the first time in the US, fish farmers are moving farther out, into the deep ocean.

Real Need, Risky Business

As Kona Blue's cofounder Neil Anthony Sims readily admits, the new face of fish farming means facing up to some big environmental challenges, like maintaining water quality and fish health without harming the farm's pristine environment. "The challenges that we face in our open-ocean operation are the same age-old issues that we as humans have faced for the last 10,000 years of terrestrial agriculture," he says. "How shall we farm to ensure that our operations are sustainable in the fullest sense of the word, so that we can continue doing this for generations, without detracting from the opportunities of our grandchildren, and their grandchildren?"

On the one hand, fish has become the hallmark of a heart-healthy diet for well-heeled consumers fortunate enough to be able to enjoy the likes of salmon fillets or high-end sushi. On the other, for much of humanity, fish—baked, steamed, fried, or dried—has provided the protein that simply allows them to survive. With populations of wild ocean fish severely depleted because we've hauled in too many for too long, our hunger for seafood can no longer be met by commercial fishing alone. As we move toward raising fish in the open ocean on a large scale, (just as we once moved to industrial farms from family-owned farms), we owe it to the planet to do so responsibly.

Aquaculture, the fastest growing sector of the food economy, already contributes nearly a third of the global seafood supply. However, there's an increasing awareness that fish must be raised with a careful eye to impacts on the environment to create a truly lasting supply that doesn't add to the ocean's ills. "Open-ocean aquaculture is only now beginning to emerge in the US. We have the opportunity to look out over the horizon and create a vision for the future of fish farming ten to twenty years out, not just what it might look like today and tomorrow," says George Leonard, director of Ocean Conservancy's aquaculture program.

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