Fish farming or pisciculture involves commercial breeding of fish, most often for food, in fish tanks or artificial enclosures such as fish ponds.
Worldwide, the most important fish species produced in fish farming are carp, catfish, salmon and tilapia.
While fish farming is practised worldwide, China alone provides 62% of the world’s farmed fish production. As of 2016, more than 50% of seafood was produced by aquaculture. In the last three decades, aquaculture has been the main driver of the increase in fisheries and aquaculture production, with an average growth of 5.3 percent per year in the period 2000–2018, reaching a record 82.1 million tonnes in 2018.
Farming carnivorous fish such as salmon, however, does not always reduce pressure on wild fisheries, such farmed fish are usually fed fishmeal and fish oil extracted from wild forage fish.
There are a lot of environmental problems associated with fish farming.
Fish farming is almost as bad as beef production for CO2 generation, acid rain, and water pollution. (Source: Wikipedia)
Another problem is that densely concentrated fish populations within fish farms can easily spread disease and parasites to the wild fish populations.
Large numbers of highly populated, open-net salmon farms can create exceptionally large concentrations of sea lice; when exposed in river estuaries containing large numbers of open-net farms, many young wild salmon are infected, and do not survive as a result. Adult salmon may survive otherwise critical numbers of sea lice, but small, thin-skinned juvenile salmon migrating to sea are highly vulnerable. On the Pacific coast of Canada, the louse-induced mortality of pink salmon in some regions is commonly over 80%…..A 2008 meta-analysis of available data shows that salmon farming reduces the survival of associated wild salmon populations. This relationship has been shown to hold for Atlantic, steelhead, pink, chum, and coho salmon. The decrease in survival or abundance often exceeds 50%.
You know you screwed up when you are reincarnated as a sea louse.
Sea lice (singular: sea louse) are copepods (small crustaceans) of the family Caligidae within the order Siphonostomatoida. They are marine ectoparasites (external parasites) that feed on the mucus, epidermal tissue, and blood of host fish. The roughly 559 species in 37 genera include around 162 Lepeophtheirus and 268 Caligus species.
Caligus rogercresseyi has become a major parasite of concern on salmon farms in countries including Chile and Scotland. Studies are under way to gain a better understanding of the parasite and the host-parasite interactions. Recent evidence is also emerging that L. salmonis in the Atlantic has sufficient genetic differences from L. salmonis from the Pacific to suggest that Atlantic and Pacific L. salmonis may have independently co-evolved with Atlantic and Pacific salmonids respectively.
What could befall a person to have them reincarnated as a sea louse?
Interesting: Elder G and several other Dall-e based image generators refused to create any images with the word “MAGA“. We plan to take this up with the Supreme Court.
Thor Salmon
Land-based producer breaks ground on smolt facility in Iceland
Thor Salmon has commenced construction of its smolt facility in Thorlakshofn, South Iceland, marking a significant milestone for the company.
“The hatchery is a significant addition to the thriving aquaculture sector in Thorlakshofn and in the entire region, which is quickly becoming one of the world’s leading areas for land-based salmon farming,” wrote farm manager Jónatan Tórdarson in a press release.
Many species of fish are caught by humans and consumed as food in virtually all regions around the world. Fish has been an important dietary source of protein and other nutrients.
Since 1961, the average annual increase in global apparent food fish consumption (3.2 percent) has outpaced population growth (1.6 percent) and exceeded consumption of meat from all terrestrial animals, combined (2.8 percent) and individually (bovine, ovine, porcine, etc.), except poultry (4.9 percent). In per capita terms, food fish consumption has grown from 9.0 kg (19.8 lb) in 1961 to 20.2 kg (45 lb) in 2015, at an average rate of about 1.5 percent per year.
Iceland at #2: 84.3 kg (185.8 lb), or 0.51 lb per day, per person.
Salmon weighs in at about 944 calories per pound, so the average Icelander gets more than 1/3 of their calories from fish.
They Icky part of Ichthys
I had a buddy who worked for the Texas Department of Health. Once I asked him if he liked sushi. His response: “No. I know too much about parasitology.”
WLBOTT Word of the Day: Parasitology
Parasite infection from raw fish is rare in the developed world (fewer than 40 cases per year in the United States), and involves mainly three kinds of parasites: Clonorchis sinensis (a trematode/fluke), Anisakis (a nematode / roundworm) and Diphyllobothrium (a cestode / tapeworm).
