Fishing for a Future

San Diego dives into the aquaculture line—which some say is the future of seafood—with a project showing how we can successfully farm fish off our shores

Ah, those delectable denizens of the deep. Who among us hasn’t savored the delicious aroma of salmon fillets or succulent Cajun-fried catfish cloaked in beer batter? And who can resist the siren song of flounder Florentine or grilled striped sea bass with orange-saffron butter?

The next time you sit down to a plate of, let’s say, salmon in vodka cream sauce, consider this: That delicacy you’re about to bite into may have been grown on a “farm” in Chile and flown to China for processing before it was dispatched to California. In other words, that salmon has probably logged more air miles this year than you have. That’s an awfully large carbon footprint for one unassuming little fish.

The world’s oceans are vast and teeming with fish, just as they have been for centuries. But there is a silent seismic shift under way beneath the surface. The United Nations estimates two-thirds of the world’s wild fisheries are either fully exploited or severely overfished. Most of those fisheries are yielding catches that surpass their ability to keep pace and replenish critical marine life. Many species of fish are losing their sustainability; scores are spiraling toward extinction. In California, nearly 20 marine species, including sea bass, are dangerously depleted. At the same time, demand for seafood here and around the world is soaring. What’s a planet to do?

Enter marine aquaculture, or mariculture: farming the seven seas.

The Blue Revolution

The surroundings are exquisitely serene, set against the calm, blue waters of Mission Bay. But don’t be fooled—a quiet revolution is being hatched behind the rockface façade at Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute. And the whole world—the scientific world, anyway—is watching.

Researchers at this prestigious nonprofit institute on Mission Bay are preparing to launch the first commercial-scale, offshore marine aquaculture demonstration project in U.S. federal waters, 5 miles off the San Diego coast. Eventually, the project will produce 3,000 metric tons of striped bass a year in surface pens, helping to provide a healthy, sustainable supply of seafood for a hungry nation. Indeed, a hungry world.

To be sure, aquaculture—the farming of fish—is not a young enterprise. The Chinese are said to have invented it nearly 4,000 years ago. And in Norway and several other Western countries, Atlantic salmon have been mass-produced for more than 40 years. Beginning in the mid-1980s, international aid agencies were pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into aquaculture projects. Shrimp ponds replaced mangrove forests in Thailand. Carp “farms” were carved out of the flood plains of the Ganges and Mekong rivers. Unprecedented growth in aqua culture production over the past two decades has made it a critical player in providing food for human consumption. In fact, modern aquaculture has been heralded as the “blue revolution,” promising a dramatic increase in the oceans’ productivity, akin to the “green revolution” of the 1960s and its impact on farm production. Driven by a sharp increase in demand for healthy seafood, aquaculture has become the fastest-growing supplier of food worldwide.

But while aquaculture has been a booming business in some parts of the world—particularly China, India and the countries of Southeast Asia—growth has been much slower in the United States. The result? We have become a fish-debtor nation. Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute president Don Kent frames our predicament in a sobering cascade of numbers.

“As it stands now, 80 percent of our seafood is imported,” says Kent, “and half of that is farm-raised. Bottom line, we’re letting someone else—mainly the Chinese—produce our seafood for us.” And that, he says, means a loss of jobs, translating to more than $40 million in lost wages and a $9 billion “contribution” to the national trade deficit, second only to oil.

“If this project is successful, the consumer will benefit from a steady, year-round supply of high-quality seafood that’s safe and healthy,” he says. “And if all goes according to plan, it will also create jobs, including new employment for displaced commercial fishermen.”

Researchers at Hubbs-SeaWorld hope to establish that an offshore facility producing tens of thousands of fish can be commercially feasible (read: profitable) and environmentally friendly. If it is successful, their demonstration project will serve as a model for offshore aquaculture in California and the United States.

Inside the Pond

Don Kent and several of his colleagues beam with pride as they guide a visitor through the labyrinth of enormous fish tanks at the Hubbs-SeaWorld facility. Numerous individual studies are being conducted here.

The environs are dimly lit. The air is cool and pungent but not unpleasant; dank but somehow not humid. Each tank is equipped with a porthole-like window covered by a heavy curtain. When the drape is lifted, we glimpse a graceful, continuous flow of large rockfish as they roam in lazy circles in water maintained at 50 degrees Fahrenheit, an ideal temperature for these hefty guys—a little chilly by our standards, but the rockfish seem to love it. Their shadowy figures glide slowly past in the semidarkness, like underwater specters. In the wild, rockfish dwell in deep water, so their tank is deeply shadowed. We’re able to steal a rare glance of their dim world when Mark Drawbridge, senior research scientist at Hubbs-SeaWorld, very briefly aims a faint beam of light into their tank.

“Their main function in life, from our perspective, is to mate and produce little fish,” Drawbridge says. But the rockfish seem oblivious to the task at hand. When it’s pointed out they appear sluggish and slow—hardly sexually active—he smiles knowingly. “They’ve got plenty of time,” he says. “These guys can live to be 75 years old.”

More fish are being raised in a nearby tank as part of a species-replenishment project, one of many conducted by the institute. Their destiny lies in the sea; eventually they will be tagged and released into the ocean.

The demonstration project planned by Hubbs-SeaWorld is a Herculean enterprise. Initially, researchers will install eight floating gravity pens, each measuring 9,000 cubic meters (about 11,700 cubic yards) in ocean water up to 300 feet deep. Stabilized with flotation devices, the pens will be fitted with two types of netting: one to contain the fish, the second to keep out predators—marine mammals, birds and, of course, humans. Eventually, there will be 24 pens serving as temporary home for many thousand striped bass and other species found in the waters off the Southern California coast. Automatic feeders will dispense pellet-size food to keep the fish happily satiated, and divers will perform daily cage inspections.

All of this in due time. First, there will be permit applications and a public review process, as well as oversight by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Department of Fish & Game and the California Coastal Commission. Kent and his colleagues at the institute hope to install the first surface pens next year.

The fish produced by the Hubbs project will be delivered by boat to shore and transferred to fish traders, brokers or wholesalers. Enter local fishermen who may have been displaced by the collapse of wild fisheries.

“This project won’t in any way be in competition with local commercial fishing,” Kent says. “Everybody has a role in the future of aquaculture.”

In the Natural World

Since its founding in 1963, Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute has built a solid reputation for its wide-ranging and eclectic research. The institute is involved in the use of satellite technology to track the seemingly boundless ocean journeys of whale sharks, endangered leatherback sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals to better understand their migratory patterns and critical habitats. And Hubbs-SeaWorld is known internationally for its studies on the effects of artificial sound on marine life and mass strandings of marine mammals. But the lion’s share of research—and Kent’s professional passion—is aquaculture.

Hubbs-SeaWorld has accrued 45 years of experience in marine research and more than three decades in the study and development of aquaculture. It operates a commercial-scale hatchery in Carlsbad, capable of producing several million fish annually, where every year up to 300,000 white sea bass are raised and then released into the ocean to help replenish wild stocks.

California’s existing aquaculture facilities are either in coastal waters, like the one in Carlsbad, or in fresh water. This new venture by Hubbs-Sea World will be the first project of its kind in federal offshore waters, which range 3 to 200 miles from shore.

“Southern California is the most promising location in the country for this type of project,” says Kent. He cites San Diego’s mild, Mediterranean-like climate, which will allow year-round production, and its proximity to an established fishing industry and major market centers.

Devin Bartley, aquaculture coordinator with the California Department of Fish & Game, describes the Hubbs-SeaWorld project as groundbreaking.

“California is a world leader in agriculture,” Bartley says. “Why can’t we be a world leader in aquaculture? A lot of theoretical studies have been done, but they’re all hypothetical. The bottom line is: You just have to get out there and do a demonstration project in order to settle the [environmental] issues that have been raised with regard to aquaculture. Scientists can argue back and forth, but until somebody actually goes out there and does the work, those arguments can go on forever.”

Of course, we don’t have forever. Just ask Sam King, whose Costa Mesa–based company owns the thriving King’s Fish House chain (12 restaurants and growing) and the upscale Water Grill in downtown Los Angeles.

“We’re operating at a maximum,” King says. “We can’t pull out any more fish than we’re pulling out right now. The world has an insatiable appetite for sea food, and somehow we have to meet that demand. We have a lot of smart scientists working on this. The way I see it, that’s where Hubbs-SeaWorld comes in.”

Fish Farm Fallout

Not surprisingly, as fish farms have grown exponentially, environmental concerns and health-related issues have followed in their wake. For example, coastal aquaculture operations produce wastes that accumulate under large pens where fish are being raised. Those waste products pose a potential threat to the marine environment. However, the Hubbs-SeaWorld project will be situated in water up to 300 feet deep, where continuous tidal currents clean the area under the pens naturally. And as Kent points out, the digestive wastes from fish raised in farms are the same as those generated by schools of wild fish.

Another school of thought posits that any farm fish that somehow escape their enclosures could have a negative impact on wild fish populations. But in its demonstration project, Hubbs-SeaWorld will use only species that are established or native to California waters.

“Whenever you do something new, there’s always some skepticism,” says Michael Rubino, manager of the aquaculture program at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. “Hubbs has a long track record. They know the area. They know the technology.”

Whatever hurdles may face the Hubbs-SeaWorld project, the one overriding advantage to creating a local supply of seafood is local control.

“There are a variety of environmental standards in place all over the world,” Rubino says. “And California has some of the highest standards in the world.”

That’s not the case in some of the countries supplying the fish we eat. In a sample inspection of imported Chinese aquacultured seafood from October 2006 to May 2007, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration found contamination with drugs and unsafe food additives, some of which have been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals. And China wasn’t the only offender. Import alerts have been ordered for fishing firms in the Philippines, Mexico and several other countries.

Says Kent, “We’re going to need a lot more seafood in the future. We can either grow that food here or import it. But when we import it, we’re not creating local jobs, and we’re relinquishing control over the quality and safety of the food we eat.”

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Defining Terms

Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the cultivation and harvest of freshwater and saltwater organisms. It implies the cultivation of aquatic populations under controlled conditions. Marine aquaculture, or mariculture, refers to the production of marine organisms, under controlled conditions, in the open ocean.

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