New rules may come for U.S. fish farms

The News Tribune: New rules may come for U.S. fish farms

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration released new guidelines that would make it easier to farm fish in federal waters, a move that could transform the nation’s coasts and the food Americans will consume in years to come.

The proposal, which sparked immediate criticism from some environmental groups, aims to increase the amount of farm-raised seafood in the United States by authorizing regional fisheries management councils to approve aquaculture operations off the coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are no fish farms in federal waters, only in the three-mile band of state waters. Some operators have applied to build fish farms in federal waters in the past, but none have won approval yet.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service officials said new ventures could ease fishing pressures on wild stocks and cut the nation’s seafood imports.

The new policy, released late Thursday, underscores the extent to which the United States and other nations are struggling to find enough seafood to supply their growing populations. Aquaculture – in which operators cultivate creatures including oysters, mussels and algae plus top predators such as salmon – now accounts for roughly half of the fish consumed, as the world’s wild stocks continue to dwindle.

But it also has raised serious environmental questions, which range in scope from whether raising carnivorous fish ends up depleting forage fish stocks to concerns about farmed fish escaping and mixing with wild species.

Michael Rubino, who directs the aquaculture program for NOAA Fisheries, said the rules seek to address the United States’ $9 billion seafood trade deficit. Of those imports, 84 percent are cultivated rather than caught.

Referring to the Agriculture Department’s new dietary guidelines released this month, Rubino said: “USDA is asking us to eat twice as much seafood. Where is that going to come from? ... There aren’t going to be large numbers of fish farms out there anytime soon. But it’s coming.”

The aquaculture guidelines, which have been in the works for a year and a half and will take another year to finalize, greenlight fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. They apply the nation’s traditional fishery management laws – which were originally crafted to set criteria for how much wild fish can be caught in a season – to aquaculture.