fish farms

Image Courtesy of FFAC

- FISH FARMS -

"Aquaculture continues to be the fastest-growing animal-food-producing sector and to outpace population growth, with per capita supply from aquaculture increasing from 0.7 kg in 1970 to 7.8 kg in 2008, an average annual growth rate of 6.6 percent."

- Food and Agriculture Organization, World Review of Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2010

​​​​​​​Fish farming is a strategy of raising giant schools of fish within enclosures located in oceans. While it is true that fish farming does not directly extract fish from the ocean for consumption, fish are still being indirectly removed from the ocean at an alarming rate - since companies are still dependent on ocean fish to provide a food supply. 

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Glimpses of Fish Farms. Images Courtesy of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

"The industry claimed that to produce one kilogram of farmed salmon, only 1.2 kilograms of feed is needed. But when I looked further, I found the feed is heavily processed, and is made of dried fish meal and extracted fish oil, which requires a massive amount of fish to produce. So in reality, you need many times more fish going into the farmer’s feed than will ever come out. So fish farming was just wild fishing in disguise."

- Ali Tabrizi, Director of Seaspiracy, 2021

Furthermore, fish farming is a dangerous and unsanitary practice. Brought by inbreeding and the incredibly dense concentrations of waste, the proliferation of unchecked disease drastically discredits the morality of the operation. 

Excerpt from Interview with Hudson Deyoe - Biological Sciences PhD and Professor at the School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (Personal Interview, 2024)

----------- A Glimpse Into Salmon Farming -----------

“These fish are dying from anemia, lice infestation, infectious diseases, chlamydia, heart disease. This is welfare abuse. So, far from being a panacea for the world food problem, salmon farming is a waste of resources. It’s biological nonsense.”

- Don Staniford, Founder of Scottish Salmon Watch, Seaspiracy, 2021

“So, it’s estimated that each salmon farm in Scotland produces organic waste equivalent to a town of 10 to 20,000 people. And taken together, it’s estimated that the Scottish salmon farming industry produces organic waste equivalent to the entire population of Scotland each year.”

- Corin Smith, Founder of Inside Scottish Salmon Feedlots, Seaspiracy, 2021

Compiled Using iMovie, Video Clips Courtesy of Seaspiracy