[HN Gopher] The problem with farmed seafood
___________________________________________________________________
The problem with farmed seafood
Author : dnetesn
Score : 146 points
Date : 2025-11-03 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| The need for wild-caught protein to feed fish is so strong that
| there is krill piracy around antarctica!
|
| https://apnews.com/article/whales-antarctica-krill-global-wa...
| dv_dt wrote:
| I thought there were fairly large blackfly farming operations
| for fish feeding. maybe for non-ocean species? As with a lot of
| operational farming practices- it's probably a lot more complex
| than a few articles could easily encompass.
| pstuart wrote:
| Did you mean black soldier fly? Farming them is a thing and
| there should be a lot more of them -- converting waste to
| protein is a major win.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetia_illucens
| dv_dt wrote:
| Yes, that's the species I was recalling. There were some
| issues with occasional accidental releases, but other than
| that, they seemed like a nice process.
| mygrant wrote:
| A friend of mine has been working on a company[1] that
| does exactly this: they sit on the waste stream of large
| agricultural processing plants and use black soldier
| flies to convert that waste into protein for aquaculture
| (and fertilizer).
|
| 1: https://www.chapulfarms.com
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Ah, fish - the one farmed animal we have not figured out how to
| feed with soybean yet. Soon, I guess.
|
| I'm not quite sure "fish-free fed fish" is going to have the same
| cache as "grass-fed beef," despite the article's suggestion.
| willis936 wrote:
| This feels very close to Silicon Valley's bit about
| pescepescetarianism.
| daveguy wrote:
| Is that eating fish that fish eat or eating fish that eat
| other fish? And why?
| willis936 wrote:
| The second one.
|
| I thought it was a way to make the silly character look
| pretentious and pseudo intellectual, but misremembered. It
| appears that it was actually a way for the character to
| narcissistically draw attention.
|
| https://youtu.be/IC-ZBJ-Kw2E
| muzani wrote:
| I've been taking algae supplements lately. It tastes like fish
| food because it _is_ fish food.
|
| Apparently, it was a source of cheap protein during wars, but
| didn't provide enough nutrients and tastes like pond scum. It
| ended up in the supplement sector because it was easier to get
| approved as it over food. Soylent Green was inspired by it.
|
| I hope it does go back into the fish food sector - it's cheap
| and nutritious but tastes worse than soy.
| internet_points wrote:
| ? soy is a major ingredient in farm-fish food
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| > Veramaris, a joint venture in the Netherlands and the United
| States, cultivated algae that produced the same omega-3 fatty
| acids found in fish oil, and in quantities sufficient to replace
| billions of forage fish.
|
| If something like this works, it has the double benefit of
| pulling carbon from the air/water and turning all of the matter
| into food. With typical plants we grow on land, (generally) most
| of the plant isn't consumed so whatever carbon it stored is a
| waste product. In some countries, that waste is just burned and
| sent back into the atmosphere. But basically 100% of algae's mass
| is consumable.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > But basically 100% of algae's mass is consumable.
|
| I'm not sure it helps at all regarding co2, you'll shit it and
| breath it out in a matter of days... co2 is only a problem when
| you burn fossil fuels, because you reintroduce millions years
| of deposit back in the atmosphere in a very short period of
| time. That's why things like burning wood aren't a big deal
| other than localised pollution
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Shitting it will not release it into the air. Maybe a small
| percentage, depending on it's circuit in nature. But yes,
| your point about the CO2 circuit stands.
| maeln wrote:
| Turns out, we were the carbon captor all along
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Most (85-90%) of the carbon in the food we eat is breathed
| out, not excreted
| ljf wrote:
| Side note - it always amazes me (and people when I tell
| them) that when you lose fat from your body, they main
| way for that fat to leave your system, is to burn it then
| breathe the co2 out - that is one of the limits on how
| much fat you can burn a day. You do lose some of the
| results of the burning, and a little through sweat, but
| the vast majority is down to co2 leaving your system.
|
| (Note you can temporarily also lose weight through water
| loss - but that isn't the loss of actual fat from your
| system.)
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Yes it's the inverse of Feyman's comments how a tree's
| mass comes from what is pulled out of the air, not the
| ground
| lisbbb wrote:
| We need to figure out how to make 8 billion humans act as
| carbon sinks!
| RobRivera wrote:
| Splice tree dna, make groot a thing irl
| api wrote:
| Over time it would gradually remove CO2 since not all of it
| goes back, but stuff like this isn't even a rounding error
| compared to the amount of CO2 we'd need to remove.
|
| Planting billions and billions of trees would pull a lot
| more, but still would only make a small dent. Greening large
| desert regions with large scale water and local climate
| engineering projects, ocean seeding, etc. would also pull
| more but still only make a dent.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Tell that to the anti-cow people, they will have a cow
| Faelon wrote:
| Unfortunately this pithy comment is inconsistent with the
| science. https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-
| local Most of the emissions from beef comes from negative
| land-use change, that is the loss of carbon-sequestering
| life that existed in the land for both the cows and the
| tons of agricultural food they eat, and methane, which is
| released directly to our atmosphere and is a much more
| potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Fortunately, if we were to
| phase out cattle, this methane has a half-life much shorter
| than CO2 and would provide important early gains in
| restabilizing our climate.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| That link shows that twice as many emissions are
| attributed to farm stage vs land use change. And fta:
| "Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the
| application of fertilizers and the production of methane
| in the stomachs of cattle."
|
| So not sure there is much for me to respond to you given
| that.
| graemep wrote:
| Cos can be grass fed. Most of the beef I have ever eaten
| is predominantly grass fed.
|
| In many places cows are a natural part of the ecosystem.
| So much so that in rewilding parts of Scotland they have
| ended up releasing cattle into the wild.
|
| Its perfectly possible for grass plus grazing animals to
| be carbon sink, and a provide a rich ecosystem.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Do grass fed cows produce less methane than corn/grain
| fed cows
| stinos wrote:
| _cows are a natural part of the ecosystem_
|
| Sure large herbivores were and still are part of many
| ecosystems.
|
| But around where I live the majority of the grass for the
| grass-fed cows doesn't come from anything remotely
| resembling a rich ecosystem. The grass is literally
| 'grass': maybe one or 2 types of grass, similar amount of
| herbs, funghi. Hardly any insects except for flies
| attracted to manure. These used to be ecosystems with >
| 20 species of grassses and herbs per square meter.
|
| And these are even relatively small farms; trying to
| upscale it beyond that to make it possible for millions
| of humans to eat meat multiple times a week, it won't get
| any better. If you're putting large amounts of cows in a
| much much smaller habitat then what they'd naturally use,
| then it's not the same ecosystem anymore.
|
| _Its perfectly possible for grass plus grazing animals
| to be carbon sink, and a provide a rich ecosystem._
|
| tldr; yes, but only if you want to feed a couple of
| people from it.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| There are countless carbon sinks within the ocean. It finds
| its way into the shells of creatures (calcium carbonate) and
| hangs around for a very long time in solid form. And lots of
| creatures die/defecate, that sinks to the bottom of the sea,
| and much of the carbon there doesn't rise back up since not
| all of it is consumed.
|
| And when you're spreading seaweed over a fish farm, a good
| chunk of that is flowing back out into the ocean and
| contributing to the cycle of carbon deposits.
|
| https://animatingcarbon.earth/fish-the-excretion-effect-
| boos...
| mattlutze wrote:
| By avoiding fishing, you stop damaging many of the carbon
| sink systems in the ocean, and so as a second-order effect
| improve the sinks we used to have.
| iberator wrote:
| Consumable by who? Just being not poisonous is not enough to be
| called consumable (taste, texture, price, availability,
| digestibility etc).
| gizmo686 wrote:
| If eating food sequestered carbon, then Earth would have turned
| into an ice ball millions (billions?) of years ago.
| helicone wrote:
| he's saying the plant breathes the CO2 then turns it into
| food, then you feed that food to the fish instead of other
| fish, putting the carbon back into the life cycle
|
| and the earth probably did turn into an ice ball millions of
| years ago
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
| adrian_b wrote:
| Nope, it does not pull any carbon dioxide from air/water.
|
| The oil with omega-3 acids is not produced from any algae, but
| from cultures of special strains of Schizochytrium.
|
| Schizochytrium is a fungus-like organism (not related to true
| fungi). It is called "algae" in marketing language, because
| "Schizochytrium" or "Stramenopiles" are words unknown to the
| general population and because "algae" sounds more appealing to
| the rich vegans who have afforded to pay the high prices under
| which this oil has been sold for many years.
|
| In any case, this does not matter much. Long-chain omega-3 are
| an essential fish food ingredient, but by mass they are a small
| fraction of fish food. Much more can be gained regarding carbon
| dioxide by using for the fish food a mixture of vegetable
| proteins that have been preprocessed to enable their digestion
| by fish.
|
| Schyzochytrium has enabled the production of long-chain omega-3
| acids without capturing small fish or krill for a few decades,
| but in the past the cost of Schyzochytrium oil was too high.
|
| In order to be used as an ingredient in farmed fish food the
| cost of Schizochytrium oil had to be decreased a lot.
|
| It appears that at least Veramaris has succeeded to do this,
| but unfortunately such progresses have not become visible yet
| in the retail price of Schizochytrium oil for human
| consumption.
|
| A decade ago, Schizochytrium oil was 8 to 10 times more
| expensive than fish oil. Then its price has decreased, so that
| 4 or 5 years ago it already was only 3 times more expensive
| than fish oil.
|
| Unfortunately, after that there were no further price
| reductions, so today the retail price of Schizochytrium oil is
| about the same as 5 years ago.
|
| If the production cost of Schizochytrium oil has really
| diminished, as said in the parent article (because it cannot be
| used in fish food, unless it is cheaper than fish oil), then
| the producers have now increased profits, without decreasing
| the retail price. Of course, like always, it is not certain
| that this is really the winning strategy for them, because
| there may be many others like me, who wait for a reduction in
| the price of Schizochytrium oil in order to switch to it from
| fish oil, so keeping this inflated price may result in a much
| lower sales volume than with a smaller price.
|
| Moreover, for whoever wants to consume vegan oil with long-
| chain omega-3 acids, there is an additional trap with
| Schizochytrium oil. The original Schizochytrium oil has a
| double concentration in comparison with fish oil (i.e. around 2
| grams of omega-3 acids per 5 mL of oil), but there are many
| sellers who sell diluted oil at the same price like the sellers
| who sell non-diluted oil. Thus the true price of long-chain
| omega-3 acids from the sellers of diluted oil may be 10 to 20
| times higher than from fish oil. Therefore when buying omega-3
| capsules or bottled Schizochytrium oil one must read carefully
| the fine print and compute the price per gram of DHA+EPA, in
| order to be sure that the price is right.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| To clarify for other readers... The point about
| "Schizochytrium is not algae" is that they do not
| photosynthesize and thus don't create sugars from CO2.
| Rather, this organism is a heterotroph and consumes various
| organic molecules from its environment. Industrial cultures
| are fed simple sugars and nitrogen sources, plus waste
| products like spent brewery yeast, cheese whey, and molasses.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Just eat the forage fish.
|
| As much as I like salmon and the occasional flounder, my life
| would not be any worse if I had to stick to sprats (smoked sprats
| are delicious), sardines, anchovies and whatever else is a lower
| trophic level.
|
| And you don't have to worry about mercury as a bonus.
| isolli wrote:
| I've always wondered why we enjoy eating fish predators, but
| not animal predators...
| rkomorn wrote:
| I think part of it is that the larger animal predators tend
| to be more muscular, so the meat isn't as delicious.
| delichon wrote:
| The taste difference isn't from muscle size. Predator flesh
| tends to be darker, coarser and gamey from high nitrogenous
| waste and lipid oxidation. Carnivore diets include
| secondary compounds like amines and fatty acid derivatives
| that add strong odors. Prey animals have a milder, sweeter
| flavor and tender texture due to lower metabolic by-
| products and more stable lipids. Slow twitch flesh tastes
| better than fast twitch flesh.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| Probably because just easier to catch a predatory fish than a
| land predator
|
| Throw a line in the pond, whatever bites will bite. Clean it
| and you've got dinner.
|
| Versus with hunting, historically (and even now) if you miss
| your shot or don't hit a part that immediately takes it down,
| now you've got an angry wolf/bear/moose bearing down on you.
| Wolf is also probably too close to dog for most cultures.
|
| Nowadays you _can_ get meat from bear /moose/whatever, but
| there isn't much of a culinary tradition associated with
| them. So the only people out for them are the curious or
| macho types
| Y_Y wrote:
| I assume it's because there aren't enough of them and they're
| relatively difficult to hunt/farm. Otherwise I'd be happily
| chowing down on lions and polar bears.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I have a redneck-y enough background to have eaten some
| predators. The meat doesn't taste as good. A lot of it is
| tougher or stringier. I think pigs are omnivores though, but
| I don't know what they are fed on farms.
| dnpls wrote:
| Pigs are omnivores, so they can be fed vegetables or even
| food leftovers. Grandpa raised a couple of small pigs, they
| ate corn mixed with vegetable scraps from the kitchen. The
| pigs got slaughtered and the meat was delicious.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| I expect it has something to do with muscle and fat
| composition and the physical requirements of predating on
| land vs. in water. A followup question would be what about
| water-based mammal predators like seals and whales? And what
| about water-based herbivores like beavers? Can't say how it
| tastes personally.
| dnpls wrote:
| Maybe because fish predators are still fish? So they still
| taste like fish. It seems fish-eating birds taste fishy,
| which is not really a desirable flavor in a bird. Maybe
| mammal predators are also not as tasty - then also what do
| you feed a farmed bear or a fox, they need to eat meat... So
| you'd feed them cows that we could eat ourselves? Or we raise
| rabbits just for them?
| dlisboa wrote:
| We're mammal predators too. Mammal herbivores travel in herd
| and are pretty easy to hunt. They also pose little risk. The
| answer is the same as to why lions don't have leopards as
| their main food source.
| graemep wrote:
| Because another land mammal is far more likely to accumulate
| diseases, parasites, and maybe toxins that are harmful to us
| than a fish is.
| smithkl42 wrote:
| Bear is (or at least can be) delicious. You can get a lot of
| tasty meals out of a fat berry-fed bear.
|
| I've never had the chance to eat cougar, but I've talked to
| folks who have, and they say it's their favorite meat - like
| a light, tender pork.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >I've never had the chance to eat cougar, but I've talked
| to folks who have, and they say it's their favorite meat -
| like a light, tender pork.
|
| That's surprising. I would've thought it'd be dry. Or even
| fishy.
| belorn wrote:
| From a practical matter, most fish in the ocean feed on other
| marine life. herbivorous and omnivorous fish do exist but
| they are a bit more rare, and it is more common for
| smaller/juvenile fish. Also even among those that are
| primarily herbivorous, they usually go after eggs or very
| small fish which makes them omnivorous.
|
| The most common fish that we eat are those that other fish
| also eat, like herring, and there aren't a good comparable
| land based animal in our current diet. It would be a bit like
| if a primary diet for humans would be wild rodents.
|
| One reason could be that fish like herring schools, but wild
| rodents don't. It is easier to hunt large quantity of animals
| if they are located in the same location and bunched up.
| piltdownman wrote:
| The problem is farming seafood in its contemporary best-practice
| manner which is focused on output rather than maintaining a
| sustainable ecology.
|
| All other issues - be it wild-caught marine-animal ingredients
| being eroded as a finite input, or simply killing off all-around
| it due to the increased prevalence of sea lice and industrial
| activity - are a product of the practices, not the concept.
|
| The problem is exacerbated in a grotesque feedback loop as well
| as the sea lice can transfer from farms and reduce the health and
| survival of wild salmon and trout in particular - leading to
| chemical treatments and other practices which result in
| everything from algae bloom to facilitating invasive species to
| straight-forward pollution.
| reenorap wrote:
| You can't have a sustainable ecology when China sends a city of
| trawlers to devastate fish stocks around the world and then
| sends it all back to China. It leaves the countries that were
| depending on that fish suffering with no repercussions for
| China. As far as I'm concerned, those cities of fishing boats
| should be sunk because it's an act of war by China.
| lisbbb wrote:
| I was going to post the exact same comment. The Chinese, and
| probably others, are not cooperating and are basically
| stripping the oceans clean. So it really doesn't matter what
| anyone else does when there are such egregiously bad actors
| present. Now every budding Maoist sympathizer on here can
| downvote me, lol.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is all a collective action problem. The gains you get
| now by fishing more are real, the loss you get from
| overshooting the limits is hypothetical and ind the future
| and the present always wins.
|
| Fisheries off the coast of New England have consistently
| gone through the cycle of fisherman arguing with
| ecologists, being right in the good years, having a bad
| year, having a fishery collapse, a few years of recessions
| and then finding some other population of fish which is
| less desirable, further away, more expensive, etc.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| What you're describing is different from what the Chinese
| distant water fishing fleet is doing. They're essentially
| strip mining the ocean thousands of miles away from
| China, leaving the locals to deal with the ecological
| damage and resulting consequences.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Different and the same. What's the same is that it is a
| shared resource that people benefit privately from and
| there is no authority that can manage it globally. Like I
| say, those fish the Chinese caught are real, people are
| not sure what the long term consequences are.
| observationist wrote:
| Sink boats until the behavior changes. Behavior won't
| change until a sufficient number of boats sink. Decades
| of talking and explaining and diplomacy and politics have
| failed. The only two options remaining are accepting the
| status quo or sinking boats. Anything else is
| performative.
| helicone wrote:
| does a fishing boat make enough money to justify a naval
| escort?
|
| would the chinese front the money for a while just to
| discourage the behavior?
|
| how likely is this to lead to war?
|
| can we sink them in a plausibly deniable way?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Chinese fishing boats in the South China Sea are known
| for being lightly armed, boarding other ships, generally
| having a 'securitt' function.
| observationist wrote:
| I dunno, drones and missiles are probably the most cost
| effective way. I was in favor of diplomacy 10 and 20 and
| 30 years ago, but I'm completely and totally done
| pretending diplomacy and education and hearts and minds
| type campaigns have any value, anymore.
|
| I also think it's worth going to war over. The threat of
| killing the oceans is a pretty drastic and permanent
| threat to the entire world, and it can cascade into
| apocalyptic conditions.
|
| Having a coherent frame of rules that allow conservation
| actually increases the fish yield, but China's treating
| it like a zero sum game. It's gotta be stopped, since
| they're entirely and brazenly unwilling to stop. The same
| drones used against the venezuelan drug boats could be
| targeted at the exploitative fishing boats, and a
| consistent year or two could force international
| agreements and some sort of collaborative enforcement.
| Drone platforms and satellite monitoring could even make
| it mostly autonomous.
| kelipso wrote:
| This is so delusional and siloed from current
| geopolitical realities. This will lead to war and/or
| sanctions by China on multiple exports and imports with
| the offending countries.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| More specifically, I'd call it a "tragedy of the commons"
| problem.
|
| The simplest solution is to make the fishing rights for
| the waters a property that can be bought and sold.
|
| If you overfish in that system, you get no income in the
| future years, so greed will make you manage the fish
| responsibly.
|
| This is probably very hard to do within the current
| international law framework.
| helicone wrote:
| fish migrate
| crazygringo wrote:
| That doesn't work when fish swim between properties.
| elboru wrote:
| Build a wall?
| BrenBarn wrote:
| And make the fish pay for it?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Make them big enough and it works well enough.
|
| This works reasonably well in territorial waters.
| justincormack wrote:
| I seem to remember some calculations that the present
| value was higher if you overfished once. If interest
| rates are high anyway.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, the only real solution is to eliminate commons.
|
| In case of the ocean I would say that every country
| should have the economic right to all points in the ocean
| closer to them than to any other country. Everyone else
| gets free passage (subject to your reasonable
| environmental laws) and to engage in scientific
| operations, but only the country has any right to remove
| anything beyond scientific samples.
|
| It's not perfect given that some species move about, but
| it would go a long ways towards controlling the problem.
| maxglute wrote:
| PRC fishing mostly on international waters is an act of war
| now? NVM PRC DWF about as well behaved as other distant
| fishing fleet in terms of clipping EEZs and they're still
| underfishing per capita relative other large fishing powers,
| i.e. they're taking less from commons then entitled.
|
| Countries dependent are migratory transnational resource
| extraction are frankly living on a retarded business model
| and have only themselves to blame. Reminder 80% of PRC fish
| comes from sustainable aquaculture that control in their
| soveign waters. That's your sustainable ecology model, but it
| requires capex / infra to manage husbandry instead relying on
| gaia like some hunter gather.
| baxuz wrote:
| That's absolute bs. There's documented videos of basically
| armadas fishing up to the very edge of Argentina's
| territorial waters.
| maxglute wrote:
| >very edge of Argentina's territorial waters
|
| The edge of EEZs, aka the high seas, aka fucking
| international waters. There's lots of documentation of
| PRC DWF legally fishing where they're entitled that
| useful idiots think is illegal activity because US was
| pumping propaganda bux and generating false narratives /
| wedge issues countries PRC was cozying up with and
| rationalize deploying their coast guards to undermine PRC
| interests.
|
| There's occasionally misbehavior, i.e. AIS shenanigans
| for incursions from minority of vessels, but PRC bheavior
| proportionally is slightly BETTER than other DWFs, i.e.
| SKR, TW, ES. TLDR if an a countries entire extract model
| falls because some foreign vessels pops a few nautical
| miles into 200 mile long EEZ, i.e. a few % of occasional
| incursion, then their national fishing managment models
| are not sustainable.
|
| BTW, there's a reason only few ships are ever
| interdicted, because in aggregate, PRC DWF is just not a
| fucking issue. There were actual attemps where US coast
| guards tried to board PRC DWF fleets on high seas, again,
| international waters, and was lolled off. So the answer
| to all those asking why DWF fleets aren't sunk (I assume
| in good faith they mean all DWF and not just PRC's), the
| answer is simple: most operate legally, in international
| waters, pillaging the commons unsustainably as they are
| entitled to.
| nakedrobot2 wrote:
| Chinese fishing vessels should be sunk en masse.
| iberator wrote:
| Environmental groups such as Sea Piracy are against farming any
| kind of sea food and taking away krill or seaweed from oceans.
| Oceans are already devastated by overfishing
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Environmental groups such as Sea Piracy like to say what we
| _shouldn 't_ do, but they're usually overidealistic, and hardly
| ever suggest what we _should_ do instead. Not eating seafood is
| just not a realistic expectation.
| tokai wrote:
| We are going to end up without seafood eventually anyhow.
| There's no good solution, global fisheries will continue
| their collapse as long as we lean on them.
| kccqzy wrote:
| If there is certainty that we will end up without seafood
| eventually, we might as well enjoy all the seafood while we
| can.
| why_at wrote:
| I think their point is that we can either have no seafood
| and devastated oceans, or no seafood and healthy(ish)
| oceans.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Of course it is. You just don't like the expectation. What we
| should do is eat waaay less meat and seafood. It takes less
| land, water, and outside calories to product veggies and
| beans over meat and fish. Obviously this is not a reality for
| many people on the planet but it also is a reality for many
| people on the planet who just choose not to do it.
| iberator wrote:
| Except they do!
|
| Sea Shepard DOs:
|
| - Document illegal fishing or whaling with evidence.
|
| - Intervene to prevent illegal capture of protected species.
|
| - Promote awareness and education about marine conservation.
|
| - Buy local
|
| - Boycott trawling method of catch
| righthand wrote:
| > My other advice is a one-size-fits-all food equation, which is,
| simply, to know where it came from. If you can't place it, trace
| it, or grow it/raise it/catch it yourself, don't eat it. Eat
| aware. Know your food. Don't wait on waiters or institutions to
| come up with ways to publicize it, meet your small fishmonger and
| chat him or her up at the farmer's market yourself.
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-pescatores-dilemma_b_2463...
| leobg wrote:
| Makes a lot of sense.
|
| I always find it super weird that people will eat soy bean
| products over, say, meat or cream when they've never seen a soy
| bean plant in their whole lives.
| n3storm wrote:
| This is the website of a shrimp farm in the interior of Spain.
| Some years working now. They do not taste like wild but they are
| ok. https://norayseafood.es/en/
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Are those Macrobrachium? The freshwater river prawn? I can't
| find anything on the site, but I doubt they're doing the
| world's largest saltwater aquarium...
| patall wrote:
| Unless the grow multiple species, it's pacific white shrimp
| [1] which seems to be a salt water species. Also the pictures
| do not look like Marcobrachium
|
| [1] https://www.gourmets.net/salon-gourmets/2025/exhibitors-
| cata...
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Wonder if that means they're just using stock photos of
| shrimp. The other guy wasn't lying when he said "interior",
| it's about as far from the sea in Spain as seems possible.
| I thought all the non-coastal fish-farming ops were doing
| freshwater species.
| Faelon wrote:
| The easiest solution: Don't eat fish. Or our oceans may never
| recover.
| ActivePattern wrote:
| On the contrary, farmed fish is among the most sustainable
| protein sources for those not willing to go full vegetarian [1]
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
| goda90 wrote:
| Greenhouse gas emissions shouldn't be the only factor people
| consider for sustainability of their food. In the case of
| fish, this very article talks about the issues with farmed
| fish. Even a plant-based diet can be filled with
| unsustainable sources, such as plantations that destroy
| endangered habitats for palm oil, or industrial farming
| operations that spray lots of pesticides to harm the insect
| population and allow lots of fertilizer runoff into natural
| waterways. We're still polluting and depleting resources for
| many many vegetarian foods in the world.
|
| I'd argue that if we're looking for a full top-to-bottom
| sustainable food system, animals will play a role. But we
| need to be cognizant of the whole system, not playing whack-
| a-mole with issues.
| kakacik wrote:
| Farmed seafood is among the worst garbage you can eat. Tons
| of antibiotics, growth hormones, fish are fed utter cheap
| junk so ie salmon meat has more like pork composition than a
| wild salmon, shrimp are even worse. If you ever saw a shrimp
| 'factory' and grow pond/cage and its surroundings in a
| typical 3rd world country where most come from, you wouldn't
| eat it for a long time if ever again. Literally nothing lives
| around those places.
|
| Good in theory, horrible in practice.
| ActivePattern wrote:
| That take's outdated. In the US/EU, routine antibiotics in
| fish farming are banned [1]. Growth hormones aren't used in
| edible fish. Farmed salmon's feed changed (more plant
| oils), but it still delivers high omega-3s and usually less
| mercury than wild [2].
|
| [1] FDA "Approved Drugs for Use in Aquaculture" --
| https://www.fda.gov/media/80297/download
|
| [2] Jensen et al., Nutrients 2020 --
| https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123665
| yesfitz wrote:
| "... _among the most_... "
|
| According to your source, there are 15 sources of protein
| that emit less greenhouse gases (GHGs) per 100g of protein
| than farmed fish, including poultry and eggs, and 16 sources
| that emit more (including items that are not known for their
| protein content like coffee, apples, and dark chocolate).
| Being highly charitable, farmed fish is squarely in the
| middle.
|
| Additionally, farmed fish emits twice the GHGs of tofu, and
| almost 22 times that of nuts. So just comparing placements on
| the list paints a misleading picture.
|
| As for "not willing to go full vegetarian": you may as well
| say "not willing to stop eating fish", because they are
| equally unserious limitations when discussing these topics.
| "Not being willing" is only a slightly more mature version of
| a child saying "I don't want to".
| ActivePattern wrote:
| I don't think it's "unserious" to recognize that >85% of
| the world's population eats meat.
|
| If you're quibbling about wording, all I meant was: farmed
| fish and chicken are among the most sustainable meat
| sources.
|
| I'm not making a statement that people _should_ eat meat,
| but many people _do_ eat meat, so it 's worth comparing
| which meat sources are better than others. I think it would
| be great if more people knew that beef produces 10x the
| greenhouse gases than chicken/fish do.
| yesfitz wrote:
| It's not "quibbling" to correct your mischaracterization
| of the truth.
|
| If you'll forgive me borrowing your logic: "I'm not
| saying that people _should_ eat beef, but many people
| _do_ eat beef, so it 's worth comparing which beef
| sources are better than others."
|
| Plant-based diets are a _very_ good answer to the
| problems caused by animal agriculture. If someone takes
| issue with that answer, I 'd need a better reason than
| their personal pleasure to take them seriously in the
| conversation.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| feeding chickens to fish doesn't _sound_ sustainable ...
| RegW wrote:
| ... and just a by-product of chicken production at that. Gotta
| eat more chickens to save the oceans.
| cryoshon wrote:
| For me, the considerable environmental issues aside, the problem
| with farmed fish is that it simply doesn't taste nearly as good
| as the wild-caught versions.
|
| Take salmon for instance. In a lifetime of preparing and then
| eating several portions of salmon per week, I've noticed that the
| farmed salmon are pretty much always:
|
| -Very pale pink color, as though the animal was unhealthy
| (sometimes stores even add red food dye to cover this up)
|
| -Weak and mushy flesh, even when fresh; healthy salmon flesh is
| muscled and springy, it isn't naturally slimy and it holds its
| shape
|
| -Weak flavor that seems to be missing a lot of the more robust
| flavor notes entirely
|
| -Thinner or nearly-nonexistent layer of fat between the flesh and
| the scales (contributes to less flavor overall and removes a lot
| of the umami); the same problem also applies to the thin bands of
| fat between the rows of muscle in the filet itself
|
| -Skin/scales slightly disintegrate or fleck away at a touch
| instead of remaining intact
|
| I don't even bother buying it even if it's significantly cheaper.
|
| I can't imagine that the nutrient content is the same as the
| wild-caught fish. And based on the sickly look and taste of the
| meat, it's also very hard to believe that the farmed fish live a
| life that they find to be pleasant, to the extent such a thing is
| possible.
| orev wrote:
| Wild-caught salmon is pink because of the krill they eat, so in
| a way it's also a dye. Farmed salmon definitely has coloring
| added to get this effect, but otherwise the flesh itself isn't
| naturally pink.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The color in the farmed Salmon is the same compounds as the
| wild:
|
| https://www.dal.ca/news/2023/03/21/farmed-salmon-colour-
| heal...
|
| The amounts differ, and the farm feed may be synthetic.
| Aunche wrote:
| Arctic char and trout tend to taste more like their wild
| counterparts than salmon since they're raised on smaller, less
| industrialized farms. Many restaurants actually prefer Ora King
| salmon over regular king salmon due to the consistency.
| srid wrote:
| > the problem with farmed fish is that it simply doesn't taste
| nearly as good as the wild-caught versions.
|
| I eat wild-caught salmon _every day_ (as part of
| https://srid.ca/carnivore-diet) and can totally confirm this.
| Farmed salmon's taste is _very_ off-putting. I noticed this
| only after switching to wild salmon for a few weeks.
| maxglute wrote:
| A nice steamed white fish is pretty indistinguishable for me.
| But again I'm not a fresh fish enthusiast, and ultimately
| aquaculture makes adequate inputs for fish products like fish
| balls or fish pattys.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I eat plenty of farmed salmon (Atlantic salmon) because they
| are the default in grocery stores here and the few times I went
| out of my way to buy wild caught salmon I find that they are
| way worse. The first time I bought sockeye salmon not king
| salmon which was not fatty at all. The second time I bought
| king salmon shipped straight from Alaska and the flavor still
| disappointed. It's everything you say about farmed salmon: weak
| flesh, weak flavor, pale pink color. I'm starting to think I
| was scammed.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Has anyone had much luck raising crickets or other insects for
| feed? Fish like trout feast on them.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| The article mentions black soldier fly larva which is good for
| fish like trout that naturally eat insects. However fish higher
| on the chain need to eat bait fish, and replacing those is more
| difficult.
| aeternum wrote:
| Why can't the bait fish eat the fly larva?
| goda90 wrote:
| Black soldier fly larva seems pretty simple to farm using
| organic waste too. Lots of backyard chicken keepers make
| simple grow boxes for them:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbzedftrQJw
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| There are some exciting (or terrifying depending on your
| perspective) developments in the "lab grown/cultivated" space. I
| had a chance to have some WildType salmon the other day. The
| costs are still way above wild caught or farmed salmon, but if
| they can get the price down and improve the texture I could see
| these cultivated meats really taking off.
|
| https://github.com/Michael-Nolan/Public/blob/main/Notes/2025...
| why_at wrote:
| I'm curious what they use to provide food for the lab grown
| salmon cells. They need all the same nutrients but even more
| precisely formulated since there isn't a digestive system.
|
| It seems like it will have the same problem with inputs or
| perhaps even worse. This is one of the reasons I'm still
| skeptical about lab grown meat taking off.
| cestith wrote:
| The article reads as if nobody has considered farming anchovies,
| sardines, anchovetta, and other feed fish. We farm land crops for
| land herbivores. It seems we could feed some sea herbivores and
| omnivores with plants, and feed some of those to sea carnivores
| and omnivores.
| goda90 wrote:
| There is a certification group called Best Aquaculture
| Practices[0] that sets standards for hatcheries, farms, feed
| mills, and processing plants regarding sustainability and
| quality. They've got a new feed mill standard[1] but it seems
| like it gives feed mills a few years to come into compliance to
| use sustainable fishmeal and fish oil.
|
| [0]https://bapcertification.org/Home [1]https://bapcertification.
| org/Downloadables/pdf/standards/BAP...
| adverbly wrote:
| I recommend trying to eat more oysters and farmable shellfish.
|
| They actually clean the water and have a positive impact on the
| ocean! Farming them is good!
| officeplant wrote:
| This just reminds me of Louisiana oyster farmers in the US
| fighting against coastal restoration[1]. Part of me is
| convinced they are happier having more of our state erode away
| which will create more oyster farm beds.
|
| [1]https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/louisiana-oyster-
| in...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-03 23:01 UTC)