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There is a widely held belief that aquaculture (also called mariculture or fish-farming) will make up the 20 to 30 ton shortfall in supply of seafood, predicted by the year 2010. With respect to fish food supplies to the poor, however, the net effect is not clear. Aquaculture operations sometimes make the poor worse off. while some types of aquaculture can make a positive contribution to local nutritional needs, most modern, 'intensive' aquaculture operations are directed at export markets and do not provide increased food supplies for local poor.
In some cases fingerlings which previously had been consumed by the poor are now fattened in aquaculture operations which cater to upscale markets. Coastal shrimp mariculture has displaced many traditional coastal fisheries, and has damaged or destroyed mangrove ecosystems which had served as breeding grounds for these fisheries.
Many commercial aquaculture operations for export use large amounts of low-cost protein sources, including meal made from fish, as feed to produce high value products like shrimp. Such operations are net consumers of protein -- more goes in than comes out the other end. Although investors get rich, in nutritional terms it is highly inefficient. The capital and other resources could be used to produce much more food for many more people.
What is more, communities are often dispossessed by intensive aquaculture farms of several vital resources over which they have held traditional rights based on long-standing patters of land use. In the Philippines, for instance, there was a marked shift from the extensive cultivation of milkfish largely for domestic food supplies to the more lucrative export-oriented shrimp production in intensive ponds. The result has been the loss of valuable riceland due to conversion into, or salinisation by shrimp ponds, both detrimental to the goal of national self-sufficiency in food.
In India, for instance, there is growing concern that conversion of rice paddies to shrimp ponds may adversely affect local rice production. In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where 60% of the population is landless, thousands of hectares of land have been set aside for shrimp farms despite concerns over threats to the livelihoods of 25,000 families. While a one-hectare salt-water fish pond produces a profit of US$ 32,000 for investors in shrimp and prawn exports to Japan and North America, if that same shrimp pond were devoted instead to small-scale agriculture, some 300 people could obtain some form of employment in small-scale agricultural methods (Rigby, 1994).
Aquaculture production has destroyed over one-million hectares (2.5 million acres) of coastal wetlands and mangrove forests despite the crucial ecological functions that are lost when they are cleared, and the significant economic and social impacts. Mangroves are important as a source of nutrients for adjacent coastal ecosystems and a breeding and nursery area for many important finfish, crustaceans and molluscs which local fishing communities rely on for food and livelihoods. There is evidence that removal of mangroves leads to a decline in coastal fisheries production and the loss of potential for development of integrated aquaculture and fisheries within and adjacent to the mangroves themselves, again harming the food security of local communities.
Turning the Marine Wilderness into Farms
Farming the sea is being increasingly held up as the future of sustainable development and management of the oceans -- humans controlling, shaping and limiting nature and its processes. For many people, whether fishers or environmentalists, this would be a tragic outcome. Even more tragic for what we call natural "biodiversity". The sea remains one of the last great wilderness sanctuaries on the planet. There are many, though, multinational corporate seafood conglomerates among them, who consider that the loss of wilderness is the price that must be paid to ensure their continued profitability.
It should not be assumed, however, that progress towards farming the oceans would necessarily bring with it sound husbandry. So far, in the terrestrial as well as in the marine context, it has consisted of ruthless clearance of land and sea. Enthusiasts of farming the seas should reflect that upon land, what has often grown back after repeated attacks upon wilderness has not been rich diverse forest, nor even a sustainable monoculture, but degraded woodland, scrub, poor grazing land and ultimately desert. Are we heading down the same path with the oceans?
Will aquaculture help ensure food security? Is this the future of the oceans?
