Scuba Diving club,
Southern California
Sea Sabres
Fish Farming
is Devastating Stocks'
Reuters
in Oslo
Rerun
originally Tuesday February 18, 2003
Fish farms are a growing threat to world stocks because
ever more wild fish are being fed to their caged cousins, the conservation
group WWF said yesterday.
"Four kilos of wild-caught fish are needed to
produce one kilo of farmed fish," it said.
Farmed production worldwide roughly doubled in the past
decade to 20m tonnes a year, increasing the demand for oil and fishmeal, it
added.
Without reform the industry could be using all the
world's fish oil and half its fishmeal by 2010.
It now takes 70% of fish oil and 34% of fishmeal.
"In its current state aquaculture is contributing to
an increased pressure on already depleted fish stocks," Simon Cripps, the
director of the WWF's endangered seas programme, said in the report.
He said a decline in the stock of species used for fish
feed could have "devastating" eff ects throughout the marine food
chain, from cod, haddock and other commercial species to dolphins, orcas and
marine birds.
The WWF called for more research into alternative feeds
for farmed fish, including vegetable proteins such as soya and corn gluten,
fish offal, and the by-catches often dumped in the sea.
Last year's UN earth summit in South Africa set 2015 as
the deadline for reversing the decline in fish stocks.
Over
Fishing Causing loss of Predators
Posted July 27, 2003