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Fish farming is 'devastating stocks'
18th February 2003
Reuters
The Guardian
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.
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