A better way to farm fish? | FT Food Revolution

A lot of Salmon fish farming is trying integrating with other aquaculture. By raising mussels that filter the water it takes waste out of the water and then by aquaculture of seaweeds it further lowers the nutrient load. Its too bad salmon raised in such a way don't have a separate label.

I've raised tilapia for 2yrs and its been a great adventure. I do grow most of their food. I rasie minnows, red worms, meal worms and soldier larvae. Find a restaurant willing to save their scraps and it turns into free food for my family

Here in the Pacific Northwest the Columbia River system once returned an estimated 16 - 20 million naturally produced adult salmon, yearly. Since the middle of the 19th century, human development and conversions in land and resource use have all but eliminated the ability of the river system to produce salmon naturally. Modern returns are 1 -2 million salmon, the majority are fish hatchery origin. The hand of man falls heavily on the land, sea, and air. Why? Follow the money.

1) grow algae near the shores to capture CO2 and fertilizer ingriendents from the water 2) feed the algae to small fish in indoor tanks 3) feed the small fish to medium size fish in another tank 4) produce salmon food by mixing the medium, small fish and farmed insects. 5) you have eliminated the need to catch wild fish and can apply for gov funding for the algae farming in industrial scale

On shore closed loop aquiculture will gravitate towards cheaper land and lower energy away from costal regions. Ambient Ground temperature will also be a significant factor as ground temperature close to that required the farmed species need will lower cost. Closed RAS systems don't require much water so they could be located in non arable desert location. Algae bioreactors technology is advancing rapidly and will mitigate need for wild caught fish meal...

Salmon have been grown and put into the great lakes for decades to control populations of native species. I don't know enough about fish farming to argue, but it seems crazy to bury fish farms under abusive regulations while international fish poaching is devastating our oceans DESPITE breaking international laws that are inadequate!

This is definately the future, much better than some fish farms today --- Brilliant! 👍

A very good educational video! Thank you for it; It would be marvelous if we could grow sustainable, clean, healthy non stress fish on land. that really would help a lot. Regards.

Use invasive Asian Carp as salmon pellets?

The sea based salmon farms in Scotland produce more effluent in the waters than all the population on the West of Scotland. We get that in our marine environment, the players take the money. Quite an ‘externality’!

As someone who has been innovating and doing recycled aquaculture since 1975, It is a good overview that highly exaggerates the detrimental aspects of ocean net pens and highly underestimates the problems of recycled aquaculture systems (RAS). Both have problems but both are much, much better than overfishing the oceans. The fishmeal argument is total nonsense. It is all about economics. Fishmeal has been produced at a constant maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and constant tonnage per year worldwide for half a century when it was sold for chicken feed. I remember fishy-tasting chicken and turkeys that were horrible. Fish producers don't care if their product tastes like fish so when fish farming started, fish meal was used in fish diets as it was an excellent protein-quality feed material. We are now using a lot of soy meals and protein concentrates in fish diets and can make totally "vegan" diets for carnivorous fish species including salmon. The total aquaculture market for aquatic feeds exceeded the world supply of fish meal several decades ago and the price bumped up from the cheapest protein sources to the price range is high quality animal feed protein sources. Aquaculture is much more efficient in using all these "feedstuffs" (fish meal, feather meal, soybean, distillers dry solids, etc.) and putting almost 3 times as much "meat on the plate" as pigs, chickens, cattle, etc. Fish don't require energy to stand up or keep warm and have a higher meat yield with less bone/tendon. That farmed salmon you eat requires 1.05 kg of feed to make 1 kg of live salmon in those net pens. That chicken takes 2 kg of feed/ kg of live wt. chicken. That pork takes about 3 kg of feed (corn/soy) to make a kg of live wt pit. Note that the wild salmon takes about 10 kg of live fish/krill to make a kg of salmon. That salmon has to catch his dinner and the dinner doesn't want to be eaten alive and very painfully swim in digestive juices. Catching a feed pellet doesn't take much energy. They are a well-meaning couple but don't understand the science, technology, and nature about which they opine.

I own a fish market and we throw tons of fish scraps away every week.You could make pellets out of this to feed the salmon.

@7:17 It's not just so fancy restaurants can get better margins on fancy salmon dishes than if those were made with wild salmon. It's also so people can go to the economy grocery store (say, one of the German owned ones) and think we are getting a real treat with relatively cheap Atlantic salmon from like Chile.

fin rot is obvious in some of the underwater shots.

Chinese peasant farmers are masters of sustainability. Legumes pull nitrogen from the air. Nitrogen enriched soil grow crops watered by mineral laden water. The crops feed the family and farm animals. Solid waste from the mammals is spread as fertilizer on the fields, liquid waste flows into ponds which promotes algae growth that feed carp that feed the family. Aside from sun, CO2, and water, all other required inputs N, P, K, minerals, as well as carbon in crop waste are indefinitely recycled back to their land.

Superb idea. Better to have a landbased Aqua Set up.

I’m glad that this is solution based but the loud sounds and lack of sunlight look bad for the fish. I don’t have a better solution. And like I said I’m glad that people are thinking solution based but like can we focus on restoring more rivers to their natural state to give salmonids more space to exist and detoxifying our oceans etc?

What about content od DHA and EPA in farmed fish?

I think this Fish Farming technique shows great promise for the future of aqua-culture.

I can see this becoming a viable option in locations far from the coast. Providing a locally sourced fish, even if it costs more to raise, could be relatively viable considering the transportation fees for fish moving inland from the coasts.