Sunday, July 10, 2011

Farm-fresh barramundi, mate?

The July 18 issue of TIME magazine has a cover story titled "The future of fish: Can farming save the last wild food?"

The piece focuses on a "perfect" farmed species called barramundi, native to Australia, and makes two major points.

First, fish farming might help save wild fish, because without aquaculture the pressure to overfish would be greater.

Second, with a world population of nearly 7 billion and rising, we have no choice but to farm the sea just as we've long farmed the land.

Says the article: "It's not that commercial fishing will disappear; in fact, sustainable fisheries like Alaska's wild-salmon industry may even produce boutique foods, finally earning what they're worth."
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8 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 10, 2011 at 11:33 PM

    farmed barramundi here is the equivalent of Thailand's basa(catfish),milky flesh with no taste unless covered in some sauce.wild caught anything is the only way to go. Queensland au.

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  2. AnonymousJuly 11, 2011 at 6:01 AM

    Aye mate! P.S. how many lbs. wild caught fish to raise that 1 lb. of milky flesh? Cant feed them corn-would cut into our ethonol!

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  3. AnonymousJuly 11, 2011 at 10:50 AM

    3-7 lbs. of wild caught fish ground up to get 1lb. of farm salmon. also add the artificial coloring,bactericides,herbicides,anti-biotics,hydrogen peroxide baths,and slice baths.

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  4. AnonymousJuly 12, 2011 at 5:50 AM

    Does anyone eat beef? Pork? Chicken? Be mindful of hypocrisy...

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  5. AnonymousJuly 12, 2011 at 8:38 AM

    Whitefish is treasured for its ability to take up a sauce. Long live halibut! Or for the more economically minded, long live pollock!

    Commenter #1 misses the point. Markets want cheap, dependable supply. Tilapia taste good.

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  6. AnonymousJuly 13, 2011 at 9:57 AM

    I see that Time magazine needs to do a little more research on the demise of the King Salmon in Alaska rivers as I quote from their article, "....sustainable fisheries like Alaska's wild-salmon industry ....". The healthiest "wild-salmon industry" is the sockeye in Bristol Bay.

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  7. AnonymousJuly 13, 2011 at 5:07 PM

    try telling the hundreds of barra farms that have gone broke or on there way that markets want cheap fish,,the markets just want to make massive profits.

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  8. AnonymousJuly 15, 2011 at 7:01 PM

    If this tastes as bland as does tilapia, or has as poor texture it is rubbish. How many of these farmed fish are going to be eating fish meal from ocean caught "bait fish" which would otherwise feed larger wild fish?

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