Farmed Fish are Good — and in High Demand
Aquaculture’s revolution is well underway, with more opportunities on the horizon.
Oct 10, 2018 · 6 min read
Underwater robots roving about as ranch hands of the sea, their electronic eyes recording the health, size, and numbers of fish swimming in offshore corrals. Automatic feeders activated by the sound of hungry shrimp. UV light, ultrasound, and other drug-free treatments that keep salmon in the pink. These are just a few of the innovations making aquaculture one of the most intriguing corners of the food world right now — for entrepreneurs, investors, food purveyors, and eaters alike.
With demand for seafood around the world surging well beyond the capacity of wild fisheries, sustainable aquaculture growth is both a necessity and a compelling opportunity.
Plenty of smart people see that, which is why fish farming innovations are moving rapidly from university labs to investor portfolios.
“But wait — isn’t farmed fish bad?” you may be thinking. That’s what literally everyone outside the seafood sector says when I bring up aquaculture’s potential. But that’s sooo 1990s, like thinking that coffee and dark chocolate can’t possibly be ethically produced and even good for us. All aquaculture can be sustainable, and some is actually regenerative (oyster farming, for one, cleans water and improves climate resilience in coastal areas). Raised right, farmed fish is good — good tasting, good for your health, and in line with good resource management.
Aquaculture’s New Age: A Transformation is Underway
Of course farmed fish haven’t always been raised right and some still aren’t. But what most people don’t realize is that aquaculture is a speck of an industry compared with agriculture. Aquaculture is growing, at a rate of 5.8 percent annually, and produced 80 million metric tons of food in 2016. Yet in the U.S., agriculture uses 914 million acres versus marine aquaculture’s mere 213,000 acres. This is a ship that’s small enough for us to fully turn around and grow sustainably. We could increase production tenfold and still not use even close to 1 percent of the space U.S. agriculture requires.
A transformation in aquaculture’s productive capacity and sustainability is already happening. Meeting five big technical challenges is critical to realizing aquaculture’s potential as a clean protein — and creative solutions are bubbling up in every category.
Better Fish Feeds
If we want aquaculture to relieve pressure on wild fisheries, we can’t keep harvesting so many small wild fish to feed farmed fish. To kick the habit, we need to improve the nutritional qualities of alternative feeds. One promising path that’s attracting startups as well as agribusinesses: protein feed made from bacteria that chow down on industrial byproducts like methane (which we need to get rid of) and ethanol. Feeds based on algae, soybeans, oil seed, and insects are also in the mix.
Foolproof Farms
To safeguard coastal environments, we need to move more fish farming to on-land recirculating systems or offshore ocean farms. New closed systems under development sit in the open ocean, yet tightly control water exchange. That reduces the risk of diseases and escapes, turning farms into “Aquatraz” — tight enclosures where fish can’t escape to mix with wild populations.
A significant move offshore also requires new technologies to cope with long distances, rough seas, and dangerous diving conditions. We’re already seeing robots that can report on fish health, fix frayed nets, and remove waste. Combine that with automatic feeding and applications for artificial intelligence, computer vision, sensors, and IoT platforms, and we’re looking at a new age of precision aquaculture, with less waste and higher production levels.
Fitter Fish
Whether it’s sea lice on salmon, white spot syndrome in shrimp, or oyster herpes, diseases are the bane of aquaculture — and prevention is the best cure. Land-based and offshore farms will help. In coastal areas, multispecies farms that integrate filter feeders (oysters or mussels) with finfish and photosynthesizers (like seaweed) have heartier populations.
When it comes to treatments, the budding aquaculture animal health field is taking a pass on increased use of antibiotics and chemicals. Instead, it’s focused on early detection, non-chemical treatments (UV and ultrasound are deadly to sea lice), natural remedies (such as symbiotic cleaner species), and nutraceuticals (yes, fish will soon be gulping probiotics like the rest of us).
Waste Capture
Fish farms, on land or in water, can pollute nearby waterways and farmland with nitrate-dense wastewater. But we don’t have to accept that cost. Farmers can use both closed systems that don’t pollute and filters that make sure runoff from open systems doesn’t cause pollution. New feeds and feeding technologies, along with robots that suck up waste, can also reduce pollution. Even better, innovators are upcycling the nutrient-rich byproducts of fish farming into fertilizers or other products.
Resource Efficiency
More efficient energy and water use in aquaculture production systems is an environmental imperative that also improves profitability. As water gets scarce worldwide, it becomes more expensive, and you don’t want to pay for electricity from the grid to run your fish farm if you can help it. Many fish farmers already are using solar and geothermal power. The next step is applying water and energy efficiency innovations from other industries to the aquaculture sector.
The Tipping Point is Here
When I look at aquaculture I think, “The time is now.”
We know what the problems are, and creative thinkers from a range of disciplines are working to solve them. Many of the solutions above have multiple benefits — optimizing feeds and improving open-water cage designs, for example, reduce both disease and pollution. Most are also targeted at salmon and shrimp farming, which historically have been the most challenging in terms of sustainability.
New technologies and farming strategies under development increase quality as well as sustainability. When we pair these advances with emerging traceability solutions — a super-active innovation area for both wild and farmed seafood — we can fill the seafood case with branded products people can trust.
Yes, there are challenges, but that’s why there are great opportunities for innovation. Investing in sustainable aquaculture makes sense on several levels: It serves a high-demand market waiting to snap up quality supply. It helps economies to grow. And it provides healthy protein to a growing global population.
The time is right for aquaculture to take off. It’s already happening, and the 2018–19 cycle of the Fish 2.0 competition for sustainable seafood businesses reflects that: We have both U.S. and global aquaculture tracks, and most of the regional tracks are open to aquaculture-related enterprises. That’s because everyone, from NGOs to seafood leaders to investors, has recognized the need to grow sustainable aquaculture.
In the U.S. and globally, the market is ready.
More Hilsa on your plate: scientists succeed in growing Bengalis’ favourite ilish in fresh water
Hilsa may be the Bengalis’ favourite, but the expensive fish is beyond the reach of most people these days. The success of a new research has now created the possibility for hilsa to be more abundantly available, and naturally, make the price lower than what it is now.
Not in salty water, hilsa is now being produced in fresh water alongside other fresh water fish like rohu, katla and other breeds by the scientists of Central government run Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture (CIFA) in Bengal. And the taste of this freshwater ilishwill be just as good as the “original”.
The main impediment to growing hilsa in the fresh water tanks had been its food. Hilsas do not eat what other breeds of fish do, and thus most of the fish cultivated in the tanks were dying so far. But scientists have now come up with the right food that this breed is now consuming and growing at a good rate.
The fact that hilsas are rapidly growing in the tanks of Kalyani of Nadia district and Rahara of North 24 Parganas district, has stirred new hope in the CIFA scientists. There is a possibility of large-scale production of this breed in tanks and that will take care of the scarcity of the fish that sends its price soaring in the market.
The weight of the average fish cultivated in the tanks is between 100 and 125 grams. However, fish weighing up to 550 grams have been successfully produced in hatcheries as well. The experiment has been on since 2012. Initially, the breeding and growth of the fish was being done in aquarium but now it has been successfully shifted to hatcheries. In the absence of the right kind of feed, the fish could not survive earlier. But now, a “formulated feed” has been worked out and this is helping the fish grow.
Principal scientist of CIFA’s Rahara unit, Debnarayan Chattopadhyay, has attributed the success in cultivating hilsa in fresh water to the scientists coming up with the right feed for the fish. He said that scientist Baidyanath Pal of their centre was the man behind preparing the right feed for hilsa.
In the tank and hatchery of fisherman, Shyamacharan Chattopadhyay of Hoogly’s Mograhat, the hilsas are now being successfully bred. Once the fish successfully grows into the size right for consumption, large-scale cultivation may be possible.
And then who knows, the craving for hilsa from River Padma and the lamentation of not getting enough Ganga-bred hilsas in the market may be a thing of the past?
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পুকুরে ইলিশ চাষ করে দেখিয়ে দিলেন তিনি
পুকুরেও ইলিশ মাছ চাষ করা সম্ভব। এটাই প্রমাণ করলেন হুগলির চন্ডীচরণ চট্টোপাধ্যায়। কলকাতা থেকে মাত্র দু’ঘন্টার দূরত্বে হুগলি জেলার মগরায় প্রায় ৫৯ একর জমিতে রুই, কাতলা, চিংড়ির সঙ্গেই ইলিশ চাষ করছেন তিনি। সেখানেই বড় হচ্ছে ইলিশ। একেকটির বয়স প্রায় আঠারো মাস। ওজন হয়েছে প্রায় পাঁচশ গ্রাম।
হুগলি জেলার মগরার বাসিন্দা চন্ডীচরণ চট্টোপাধ্যায়ের রয়েছে প্রায় ৫৯ একরের একটি হ্যাচারি। সেই হ্যাচারিতেই ডিম থেকে ইলিশের পোনার জন্ম। এখন সেই পোনাগুলোই বড় হচ্ছে।
রাজ্যের প্রথম সারির কয়েকজন ইলিশ বিশেষজ্ঞকে সঙ্গে নিয়ে মগরায় হাজির হয়েছিলেন রাজ্যের মত্স্যমন্ত্রী চন্দ্রনাথ সিনহা। জাল ফেলে তোলা হয় পুকুরে জন্মানো ইলিশ মাছ। হাতে নিয়ে একেবারেই অবাক হয়ে যান মন্ত্রী।
তিনি বলেন, এটা সত্যিই অন্যরকম ব্যাপার। ইলিশ মাছ পুকুরেই বড় হতে পারে তা এই প্রথম দেখলাম। দপ্তর সূত্র বলছে, এই বর্ষার আগে এই হ্যাচারিতে ডিম ফুটে প্রায় দশ লাখ ইলিশ মাছের পোনা হয়েছে।
রাজ্যের দুই জায়গায় গঙ্গার মোহনায় এই পোনা ইলিশগুলো ফেলা হবে। প্রাথমিকভাবে, ঠিক করা হয়েছে ডায়মন্ডহারবার ও খড়গপুরের কাছে গঙ্গায় ইলিশ ছাড়া হবে। আগামী ১০ জুলাই মত্স্যমন্ত্রী ইলিশ বিশেষজ্ঞদের নিয়ে ডায়মন্ড হারবারে যাবেন ইলিশের পোনা ফেলতে।
রাজ্যের ইলিশ বিষেশজ্ঞরা বলছেন, গঙ্গায় যেহেতু জোয়ার–ভাটা হয়, তাই ইলিশের ওজনও দ্রুত বাড়ে। গঙ্গায় আঠারো মাসে একটি ইলিশের ওজন হয় প্রায় এক কেজির কাছাকাছি। এই হ্যাচারিতে ইলিশের ওজন হয়েছে মাত্র পাঁচশো গ্রাম।
কিভাবে এটা সম্ভব হলো? সেটাই জানিয়েছেন চন্ডীচরণ চট্টোপাধ্যায়। তিনি বলেন, তিন বছর আগে অর্থাৎ ২০১৬ সালের জুলাই মাসের এক দুপুরে তিনি হাজির হলেছিলেন সল্টলেকের মীন ভবনে। মত্স্য দফতরের কর্মকর্তাদের তিনি একটি প্রস্তাব দেন।
সে সময় তার কথা শুনে কেউ তেমন গুরুত্ব দেননি। তবে কথাটা কানে আসতেই চন্ডীবাবুকে নিজের ঘরে ডেকে নেন চন্দ্রনাথ সিনহা। সব শুনে সরকারি সাহায্যর প্রতিশ্রুতি দেন। আর ফিরে তাকাতে হয়নি চন্ডীবাবুকে।
সরকারি সহায়তা আর অদম্য সাহস নিয়ে পুকুরের মিঠা পানিতেই নোনা ইলিশ চাষ করে দেখিয়েছেন তিনি। স্বাদ আর গন্ধেও কোন পার্থক্য নেই বলে দাবি তার। চন্ডীবাবু বলেন, ‘ইলিশ উত্পাদনে স্বাবলম্বী হতে হবে। এমনটাই জেদ চেপেছিল মাথায়। আজ আমি সেটা করে দেখিয়েছি। সত্যিই আমি খুব খুশি।’