Unanswered Questions Raised About Uncharted Offshore Plan
by Anne Mosness

Inside an offshore aquaculture cage. Proponents of the Aquaculture Boom/Blue Revolution have been criticized for wanting to build it on the backs of wild fish- herring, mackerel, menhaden. NOAA photo

Anne Mosness was captain of salmon fishing boats in Alaska and Washington for more than 25 years. She has developed the “Go Wild Campaign” to educate consumers, media and elected officials about the value of family fisheries, health benefits of wild fish, and the risks of industrial aquaculture. She is also an organizer of the new coalition of regional fishing and conservation groups, Wildfish Network, and welcomes inquiries at eatwildfish@aol.com

The decline of wild Atlantic salmon and their cousins in the North Pacific serves as a warning that it is difficult to turn back the clock and restore clean water, free flowing rivers and once bountiful, natural resources. It is also difficult to resuscitate small businesses and coastal communities when they have been displaced or devastated by disasters, reckless governmental policies or polluting industries.

The “National Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2007” has been introduced again to Congress and would allow sweeping changes in the management of our Exclusive Economic Zone, three nautical miles to 200 nautical from coastal states.

In the House of Representatives, NOAA’s bill H. R. 2010, has been referred to the Natural Resources subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans, to the Ways and Means subcommittee on Trade, and to the Foreign Affairs Committee. The Senate version is S. 1609, and NE fishing folks should contact their elected officials on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee: Senators Snowe, Sununu and Kerry. It is crucial for the fishing fleet, from Maine to California, Florida to Alaska, to weigh in while we still have a voice.

The legislation is being promoted by the Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The sponsors of S. 1609, Senators Ted Stevens of Alaska and Dan Inouye of Hawaii, Chair and Vice-chair of the Commerce, Science & Transportation committee, stated that while they understood “this is a top priority for the Administration, we continue to have concerns with the Administration’s bill as drafted, particularly with regard to the need for clearer safeguards for the environment and native fish stocks.”

States that want to protect their wild fish stocks, marine water quality, navigation, recreation and fishing areas can keep their waters free of industrial aquaculture operations only up to 12 miles offshore, under NOAA’s plan. This “opt out” to 12 miles was reduced from 200 miles in the previous version introduced in 2005, S. 1195.

Although a sponsor of S. 1609, Senator Stevens immediately introduced an amendment that “would prohibit offshore aquaculture of finfish in the Exclusive Economic Zone off the coast of Alaska.”

On the West Coast, the Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission are asking for the same kind of protection requested by Alaska — a voluntary “opt-in.” Otherwise, federal policy subverting state regulations and environmental protections, such as bans on production of genetically modified fish, will be in effect.

Despite NOAA’s assurances that legislation “protects wild stocks and the quality of marine ecosystems,” their bill also states that environmental standards need only be “addressed” to “the extent necessary.”

To understand the impacts of open cage aquaculture, elected officials, media, conservation and food safety organizations often look to Maine and Washington, the two states that allowed salmon farming before the risks were known. In Washington, more than 613,000 non-native salmon escaped into state waters from 1996-1999. A professor emeritus from the University of Washington calculated that 4 farms across from Seattle allow 5,180,000 pounds of fish feces to flush annually into Puget Sound. Residents of the city paid $573 million to build a secondary sewage treatment facility and $80 million annually to maintain the facility, which releases around 4 million pounds of sterilized total suspended solids (TSS) each year. The fish farm sewage is untreated and non-sterile. The cost to the fish farm industry to use the public marine commons for waste disposal is zero.

When promoting its legislation, NOAA is projecting a five-fold expansion in the U.S. aquaculture industry by 2025, increasing its value to $5 billion a year. Independent scientists have calculated the pollution from the industry will also expand dramatically. Based on NOAA’s figures, nitrogen in the fish waste discharged from fish farms in our EEZ would be equivalent to the untreated sewage of 17 million people.
  
Despite NOAA’s optimistic economic projections, the Congressional Research Service stated in its 2004 Report to Congress, “Little evidence has been provided for the economic benefits of open ocean aquaculture development beyond the general acknowledgment that marine aquaculture has proven profitable elsewhere, especially in areas with little or no environmental regulation and/or enforcement.”

Blank Check Offered
Unlike other facilities that operate in public waters, NOAA’s legislation would allow privately owned fish farms permits for 20 years, an extremely long period of time. There is no requirement in the federal legislation for payment of royalties or fair compensation for use of public trust resources. There is also no requirement that fees cover the costs of the application process, monitoring or enforcement of permit conditions. NOAA’s bill authorizes open-ended appropriations “for such sums as may be necessary to carry out this Act.”

Marking farmed fish will be required only “if necessary,” and catching escaped fish in commercial or recreational gear could conceivably, in future draconian implementation, result in charges of theft.

Offshore aquaculture operations would be exempted from the definition of “fishing” under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. It is unclear if there will be any protection for essential fish habitat (EFH) or habitat areas of particular concern (HAPC) with this exemption.

Commercial pole and hook fishing off the Florida coast. Many believe the wild fishery is the only sustainable fishery if management is based on real sustainability, not maximum yield. Scientists see that the wild fishery has sustainability built into it, having lasted hundreds of millenia. Andrey Urcelayeta photo, Courtesy of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

Offshore aquaculture has been promoted to the commercial fishing industry as providing “additional jobs and revenue for coastal communities” (NOAA Aquaculture Program handout, March 12). At the same time, NOAA is publicizing their aquaculture plan as part of this administration’s push for a guest worker employment programs.

Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez said at the National Seafood Institute luncheon at the Boston Seafood Show in March, “I’d like to make a final point about a problem the fisheries industry is facing: finding workers to fill jobs. President Bush is committed to working with Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration bill...Everywhere I go, business owners tell me they can’t fill jobs. I know that this is a major issue for many of you, especially finding enough seasonal workers for harvesting and processing seafood and fish. We have to face the reality that we have a labor shortage, that we need foreign labor to fill it.”

NOAA’s photo of an oil rig with a fish farm in the foreground (http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/fish5210.htm) makes clearer the connection between politics, the energy industry and producers of cheap fish that unfairly compete with commercially caught wild fish in the marketplace. Currently, oil company leases require removal of platforms within one year of being retired from use. Using the platform to anchor a fish farm or locating the cage within the vicinity of a retired platform eliminates a major expense of eventually removing more than 4,000 oil platforms from coastal waters.

Throughout the nation, fishing grounds, small businesses and traditional communities are perceived as being in the way of extractive, large scale industries, coastal gentrification, and access to oil and other nonrenewable resources. Waterfront real estate has skyrocketed in value, and instead of helping the fishing industry get back in business following disasters, governmental policies have too often benefited their competitors.

Bruce Brown wrote in his 1982 book Mountain in the Clouds, A Search for Wild Salmon, “It is that the destruction of common food resources is not a sad byproduct of modern industrialization, but rather a necessary prerequisite for its success.”

In the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, just as in the Northeast, most of the fishing fleet is declined in age, number of participants and value of investments and licenses. Largely, the decline has coincided with farmed seafoods flooding the marketplace. Since governments have allowed open cages to use our publicly owned waters for sewage disposal, the fish farm industry has been able to externalize its costs.

Without much help from agencies mandated to enforce labeling laws, savvy consumers have slowly learned to differentiate farmed and wild seafoods in the marketplace. Wild salmon populations remain abundant in many regions of Alaska. More than 43 million sockeye returned to the rivers of Bristol Bay in a month, this summer. Wild salmon provide the nutritional and cultural sustenance of residents living in remote villages, along with being the economic engine that pays for high winter heating bills.

Scientists and conservationists are beginning to speak up. The Atlantic Salmon Federation, along with 32 other conservation groups in six countries, wants to move open-net salmon operations 30 kilometers away from the mouths of wild salmon rivers. The organization blames salmon farms for the decline of wild salmon, stating in a recent press release, “There is a comprehensive body of research proving negative impacts of salmon farming on wild salmon, including parasites, disease and weakening of the wild gene pool when farmed salmon escape and interbreed.”

At the same time, eighteen prominent North American scientists have written to Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Gordon Campbell warning that B.C. wild salmon would continue to decline if farmed salmon are not quarantined: “…the only management action that can ensure the protection of wild salmon stocks from farmed salmon is a complete physical barrier to pathogen transmission between wild and farm salmon (closed containment) and/or removal of salmon farms from major juvenile salmon migration routes.”

NOAA has been promoting open cage fish farming without preparing required environmental impact statements, without collecting baseline datasets or evaluating socio-economic impacts on existing fisheries and businesses. Our elected officials need to put NOAA to the task of promoting good science, not good salesmanship.

Wild fish and the US fishing industry needs to be a priority for NOAA. After S. 1195 was introduced in 2005, Admiral James Watkins of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and Leon Panetta of the PEW Oceans Commission stated, “restoring depleted [wild] fish stocks would yield significant economic benefits” and “increase catch levels by 64 percent, adding $1.3 billion to the US economy.”

NOAA is touting a growing “seafood trade deficit” as a major reason to allow fish feedlots in our marine waters. Until safeguards to protect wild fish and wild fisheries are in place, NOAA’s plan for privatizing our ocean commons with polluting fish feedlots needs to be deep-sixed.