🐟 Maturing Aquaculture toward Healthier Practices

*Sea Lice on Farmed Salmon, by Corin Smith.*

Summary

The complexity of aquatic ecosystems is little understood and challenging to study.

Modern technologies are providing a new window underwater.

Their impacts on our currently immature aquacultural practices could be profound.

The Problem

Today over 50% of seafood is produced by aquaculture (or fish farming).

As an industry it generates a higher revenue than any other food industry.

And though earliest evidence of aquaculture can be found in the farming of Carp in China, over 2,000 years ago, in today’s mass industrial form, fish farming is very new.

Generally our understanding of life under water is far lesser than life above ground.

This is particularly true of aquaculture which for obvious reasons has proved less observable and more obscure than agriculture. In its current form, fish farming is failing the fish, the surrounding ecosystems and ultimately human health:

1. The impact on fish health

The majority of larger scale fish-farms are deeply damaging for fish health, providing the perfect breeding ground for disease and sea lice. Farmers tackle this unhealthy environment currently with the heavy-use of pesticides and veterinary drugs.

2. The impact on ecosystem health

Open-net fish farms – the majority of aquaculture – are often placed in important and biodiverse ecosystems such as estuaries or coastlines. Often overcrowded, they leak large amounts of fecal, food, and chemical waste into wider aquatic ecosystem. On top of that, large escapes are common and lead to the transmission of disease, the tampering of the wild-type gene pool and the introduction of invasive species.

3. The impact on human health

Though a fish diet is considered very beneficial to human health, the benefits of disease, pesticide, or veterinary drug-ridden fish is more questionable. In fact, farmed fish have been found to contain high levels of PCB's, fungicides and antibiotics.

With demand for farmed fish likely to grow as human population increases and wild fish populations become increasingly protected, our practices need improve drastically for our own health, let alone the health of the ocean and its dwellers.

The Scape

Imagine in the not-so-distant future, fish farming has become a sustainable and healthy practice that affords the fish a life befitting the sentient kingdom we now know them to be.

That leaves little-to-no trace on the surrounding aquatic ecosystems, ensuring the restoration of wild species.

And that continues to provide human populations with seafood free from disease or chemicals.

What was the turning point? There were of course many. The finding of alternative feedstocks, the increasing regulation on chemical use, the localisation of food systems.

Underpinning them all was a transformation in our understanding of life under the sea. With novel technologies increasing our capacity to study and research the complexity of aquatic life, the possibility of healthy aquacultural practices was unlocked.

The earliest innovator in this space, a company called Tidal AI, built an intricate system of autonomous cameras, remote sensors and autonomous feeding systems all maintained and analysed by advanced AI systems. The system provides real-time feedback of everything from specie-specific behaviour to oxygen levels in the water. Tested originally with some of the biggest fish farms, the exponential body of data increasingly revealed critical patterns in fish-farming practices.

This leap in understanding has enabled farmers to develop well-balanced diets and well-regulated feeding patterns preventing waste.

It has unravelled the complexities of diet, farm-capacity and seasonal variation.

It has evidenced how the mishandling of these complexities creates the conditions for disease and sea lice.

The ever-growing datasets have ultimately provided the knowledge and evidence needed to begin a transition toward healthy farming practices. From farmers to policy-makers, data-driven decision-making has been the key to catalysing this transition.

Downstream Value Creation

The transformation of aquaculture has improved the situation on several fronts:

Healthy Conditions. The maintenance of respectable conditions in which fish populations are appropriate and disease is largely prevented upstream.
Less pollution. The mass reduction in waste and pollution as chemical inputs are rarely needed and fish escapes rarely happen.
Better food. The production of healthier seafood, no longer disease or input-ridden.
Improved economics. The economic improvement of fish-farming, with more efficient use of feedstocks and less reliance upon downstream treatment costs, enabling farmers to prioritise and further explore sustainable aquaculture.

As Tidal AI identified at their conception, the value of our increased understanding of life under the sea does not end at the development of healthy aquaculture. The body of data that is slowly untangling the complexity aquatic ecosystems will continue to prove vital in many of our challenges today, from understanding carbon sequestration in Kelp forests to preventing eutrification and algae blooms damaging our waterways.

Yet, with our immature aquacultural practices having resulted in damage across the fish, ecosystems and human populations, the immediate downstream impacts of Tidal AI and similar technologies has been catalytic.