“Trash fish” aquaculture
September 12th, 2008 by chuckWith the impending shortage of fish meal and fish oil used in aquaculture, the industry needs to look to alternatives.
Usually low value “trash fish” are the main source of these resources and not only used in aquaculture but in feeding other animals and occasioanally in human food.
Rather than acquiring new food sources such as algae, insects and plants, perhaps aquaculture should look towards producing these lower quality fish alongside their higher value stocks. By developing onsite processing methods, lower quality fish could be used as feed for higher value fish as well as for feeding non aquatic food animals. This presents an opportunity for aquaculture to target a wider range of markets from traditional agriculture through to human consumption, while simultaneously sustaining itself.
Tags: agriculture, sustainability, trash fish
Posted in Economics. Permalink for this post: permalink.
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September 12th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Growing fish to feed fish is a very interesting idea. Some initial questions that spring to mind regarding this:
1) Where would the feed for the “trash fish” come from?
2) Would it be cost effective - potential additional labour and/or technology costs of looking after these additional fish and cages?
September 12th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Agree with your thoughts about the feed for the trash fish. Another potential issue is the establishment costs to breed and hold (in cages) those trash fish. I think more research into the economics of this idea maybe useful.
There was a documentary recently about the environmental impact derived from commercial fishing and one of the problem mentioned that caught my attention is bycatch. When fisherman target certain species they want to catch they also can catch other species by accident, these non-target species are called bycatch. Bycatch are normally returned to the ocean as their fishing licence only allows them to catch a particular specie of fish.
Most bycatch are finfish, sharks, stingrays or
invertebrates (crabs, shells, sea stars). In some
cases the fish caught as bycatch by one fishery
may be a target species for another fishery. Most
bycatch is returned to the ocean but depending on
the species it can be returned alive or dead. Frankly the return of dead fish to the ocean is a waste of resources to me.
Some of the bycatch fish can be used as direct feed to certain specie of aquaculture finfish. We can also explore to use the bycatch as an ingredient of processed feed. Perhaps we need to look at working with the fishing community and the government authority to explore the possibility of using some of the bycatch as feed, rather than those bycatch going to waste, to tackle the problems in feed and sustainability.