The solution that seems obvious would be to supplement wild fishing with “sustainable” farmed fish.

But that is a massive misconception.

Farm-raised fish are fed great quantities of fish meal, which comes from wild-caught fish. As the Organic Consumers Association pointed out, for the 10 species of fish most commonly farmed, it takes 1.9 kg of wild fish to produce 1 kg of farm-raised fish.

So instead of taking pressure off of the wild fish supplies, farmed fish are actually adding to it. And there are other problems with fish farms as well, problems that are contributing to the degradation of marine ecosystems. An article in the Los Angeles Times several years ago said it well:

“Fish wastes and uneaten feed smother the sea floor beneath these farms, generating bacteria that consume oxygen vital to shellfish and other bottom-dwelling sea creatures. Disease and parasites, which would normally exist in relatively low levels in fish scattered around the oceans, can run rampant in densely packed fish farms.

Pesticides fed to the fish and toxic copper sulfate used to keep nets free of algae are building up in sea-floor sediments. Antibiotics have created resistant strains of disease that infect both wild and domesticated fish.

Clouds of sea lice, incubated by captive fish on farms, swarm wild salmon as they swim past on their migration to the ocean.”

• Disease and parasites?
• Dangerous amounts of waste?
• Resistant strains of disease?

This sounds a lot like filthy, land-based factory farms to me. And, in fact, experts have begun to call fish farms nothing more than factory farms at sea.