Benefits of Aquaculture:
- Economic:
- Money: With the domestic seafood demand for 2025 predicted to be 2.2 million metric tons more than today, there is a potential for $1 billion per year revenues by the same year. While the current value of US aquaculture production is near $900 million annually, the US Department of Commerce hopes to increase this to $5 billion by 2025.
- Social:
- Jobs: Aquaculture has the potential to provide those fishermen put out of work as well as new recruits with a job in aquaculture.
- Dietary needs: The growth in the aquaculture industry has lead to decreased price per pound for numerous popular fish, making it easier and cheaper for many Americans to obtain the health benefits of a diet with a sufficient fish component.
- Environmental:
- Decreased pressure on wild fisheries: A growing aquaculture sector has the potential to decrease the pressure on wild fish stocks, provided that market demand for famed fish is as great as the demand for wild fish.
- A potentially less harmful fishing technique: There has been some suggestion that fish farming may have less harmful impact on the ecosystem than some particularly deleterious fishing techniques, such as ocean trawling that damages the ocean substrate and has high rates of bycatch, the unintended catch and death of non-targeted species.
Risks of Aquaculture:
- To the Farmed Fish:
- Disease and Sea Lice: When any type of organism is confined in high density the spread of disease and parasites can become more rapid.
- Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA): ISA (aka hemorrhagic kidney syndrome) is a lethal disease of Atlantic salmon caused by an orthomyxovirus. While this virus appears to only cause disease in Atlantic salmon, both wild and farmed, it can also infect the sea run brown trout, rainbow trout and other wild fish such as herring.
- Other Fish Diseases Occurring in Aquaculture: Spring viremia of carp (SVC) is a systemic, acute and highly contagious viral disease caused by Rhabdovirus.
- To the Surrounding Environment and Organisms:
- Pollution from Aquaculture: Sedimentation of feces and uneaten fish feed can add large quantities of nutrient-rich organic matter into the sea (marine or coastal pens), rivers (raceways) or soil (inland ponds).
- Increased Fishing Pressure on Wild Stocks: Many farmed fish are carnivorous species that require more feed products than can be supported from natural food sources either growing within or passing through fish ponds or pens.
- Escaped Farmed Fish = Invasive Species: In the United States and abroad, aquaculture has become a leading vector of aquatic invasive species worldwide introducing unwanted seaweeds, fish, invertebrates, parasites, and pathogens.
- Spread of Sea Lice to Wild Fish: A growing number of scientific studies are reporting on the movement of sea lice from farmed salmon stocks to wild salmon stocks.
- To the Human Population:
- Health effects from farmed fish consumption: Bioaccumulation of toxins in Salmon: Not only are farmed salmon artificially colored, higher in fat and lower on Omega-3 fatty acids than their wild counterparts, but a new report showed elevated levels of PCBs and other toxins in farmed stocks.
- Jobs and the Economy: If a state chooses to allow aquaculture, it may be able to increase job availability, but it may also be displacing traditional commercial fishermen that do not desire to leave their occupation.