9 ms·

The problem with farmed seafood

155 points by dnetesn 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
datadrivenangel 11mo ago
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-warming-fishing-a4525f1f68d3beca3212caa9096dde27 https://apnews.com/article/whales-antarctica-krill-global-wa...
- dv_dt 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetia_illucens
    - dv_dt 11mo ago
      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 11mo ago
        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 https://www.chapulfarms.com
        pstuart 11mo ago
        My notion of how to address the feed supply issue is: 1. Black Soldier Flies 2. Duckweed 3. Algae (Omega 3s) All of the above are strong protein sources and duckweed and algae are fast growers and high density producers (at least an order of magnitude more than soybeans). Obviously more effort is required to farm them but with automation it should require minimal labor.
CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  This feels very close to Silicon Valley's bit about pescepescetarianism.
  - daveguy 11mo ago
    Is that eating fish that fish eat or eating fish that eat other fish? And why?
    - willis936 11mo ago
      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 https://youtu.be/IC-ZBJ-Kw2E
- muzani 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
  ? soy is a major ingredient in farm-fish food
  - Sammi 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
forgotoldacc 11mo ago
> 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 11mo ago
  > 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 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      Turns out, we were the carbon captor all along
    - CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
      Most (85-90%) of the carbon in the food we eat is breathed out, not excreted
      - ljf 11mo ago
        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.)
antisthenes 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  I've always wondered why we enjoy eating fish predators, but not animal predators...
  - rkomorn 11mo ago
    I think part of it is that the larger animal predators tend to be more muscular, so the meat isn't as delicious.
    - delichon 11mo ago
      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 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
piltdownman 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - MaoTinyDong 11mo ago
      [flagged]
    - PaulHoule 11mo ago
      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.
iberator 11mo ago
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
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- stronglikedan 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      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 11mo ago
        I think their point is that we can either have no seafood and devastated oceans, or no seafood and healthy(ish) oceans.
  - thinkingtoilet 11mo ago
    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.
righthand 11mo ago
> 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_246373 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-pescatores-dilemma_b_2463...
- leobg 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
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/ https://norayseafood.es/en/
- NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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-catalogue/noray-seafood/noray-the-eco-friendly-shrimp/1348584 https://www.gourmets.net/salon-gourmets/2025/exhibitors-cata...
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago
      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.
      - n3storm 11mo ago
        Is a regular sea variety. Nothing crazy.
    - n3storm 11mo ago
      Litopenaeus vannamei https://norayseafood.es/en/producto/raw-shrimp-40-60-pieces-per-kg-in-1-kg-tray/ https://norayseafood.es/en/producto/raw-shrimp-40-60-pieces-...
      - 11mo ago
Faelon 11mo ago
The easiest solution: Don't eat fish. Or our oceans may never recover.
- ActivePattern 11mo ago
  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 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
  - goda90 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      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 https://www.fda.gov/media/80297/download [2] Jensen et al., Nutrients 2020 — https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123665 https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123665
gorfian_robot 11mo ago
feeding chickens to fish doesn't sound sustainable ...
- RegW 11mo ago
  ... and just a by-product of chicken production at that. Gotta eat more chickens to save the oceans.
cryoshon 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    The color in the farmed Salmon is the same compounds as the wild: https://www.dal.ca/news/2023/03/21/farmed-salmon-colour-healthy-antioxidant.html https://www.dal.ca/news/2023/03/21/farmed-salmon-colour-heal... The amounts differ, and the farm feed may be synthetic.
- Aunche 11mo ago
  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.
xhkkffbf 11mo ago
Has anyone had much luck raising crickets or other insects for feed? Fish like trout feast on them.
- anon84873628 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    Why can't the bait fish eat the fly larva?
  - goda90 11mo ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbzedftrQJw
MichaelNolan 11mo ago
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/2025-08-17-WildTypeSalmon.md https://github.com/Michael-Nolan/Public/blob/main/Notes/2025...
- why_at 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
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 https://bapcertification.org/Home [1]https://bapcertification.org/Downloadables/pdf/standards/BAP%20Feed%20Mill%20Standard%20-%20Issue%203.3.pdf https://bapcertification.org/Downloadables/pdf/standards/BAP...
adverbly 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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-industry-others-challenge-29-billion-coastal-restoration-2024-01-11/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/louisiana-oyster-in...
- seec 11mo ago
  But oysters are really not good. It tastes weird with too strong a note of salty water and has a pretty bad texture that makes masticating unenjoyable. They are poor man's food that got super expensive with clever marketing and supply management (and since they need to be alive the supply chain is extremely complicated and expensive, you can't store them for long). If you live near a sea and can get them dirt cheap why not, but if you live far into the land, they are mostly a waste of good money and a way for pretentious people to appear fancy/rich at the Christmas holiday.
  - Crestwave 11mo ago
    There are lots of ways to cook oysters, which significantly lessens the briny taste and gelatinous texture. While it's true that their rise in the West was mostly from clever marketing, oysters are just considered normal seafood in many countries and are cooked into dishes. But yes, the premium price due to the raw oyster trend makes it not worth it if you live far away from the sea.
    - seec 11mo ago
      I'm sure there are some good ways to make it quite palatable but the issue is really the price that makes no sense. In France, last time I calculated, they are more expensive by weight than a prime cut of beef, that's just dumb. If they would make cooked products with them at a decent price I could have an interest, but since they make so much money by selling it as a delicacy with a premium price it's never going to happen. It's just not a very competitive protein source, regardless of the taste/enjoyability and that's the issue in the end...

155 points by dnetesn 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

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-warming-fishing-a4525f1f68d3beca3212caa9096dde27 https://apnews.com/article/whales-antarctica-krill-global-wa...

dv_dt 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetia_illucens
  - dv_dt 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      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 https://www.chapulfarms.com
      - pstuart 11mo ago
        My notion of how to address the feed supply issue is: 1. Black Soldier Flies 2. Duckweed 3. Algae (Omega 3s) All of the above are strong protein sources and duckweed and algae are fast growers and high density producers (at least an order of magnitude more than soybeans). Obviously more effort is required to farm them but with automation it should require minimal labor.

CGMthrowaway 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
This feels very close to Silicon Valley's bit about pescepescetarianism.
- daveguy 11mo ago
  Is that eating fish that fish eat or eating fish that eat other fish? And why?
  - willis936 11mo ago
    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 https://youtu.be/IC-ZBJ-Kw2E
muzani 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
? soy is a major ingredient in farm-fish food
- Sammi 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

forgotoldacc 11mo ago

> 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 11mo ago
> 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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    Turns out, we were the carbon captor all along
  - CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
    Most (85-90%) of the carbon in the food we eat is breathed out, not excreted
    - ljf 11mo ago
      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.)

antisthenes 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
I've always wondered why we enjoy eating fish predators, but not animal predators...
- rkomorn 11mo ago
  I think part of it is that the larger animal predators tend to be more muscular, so the meat isn't as delicious.
  - delichon 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago

piltdownman 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - MaoTinyDong 11mo ago
    [flagged]
  - PaulHoule 11mo ago
    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.

iberator 11mo ago

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

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
stronglikedan 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      I think their point is that we can either have no seafood and devastated oceans, or no seafood and healthy(ish) oceans.
- thinkingtoilet 11mo ago
  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.

righthand 11mo ago

> 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_246373 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-pescatores-dilemma_b_2463...

leobg 11mo ago
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 11mo ago

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/ https://norayseafood.es/en/

NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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-catalogue/noray-seafood/noray-the-eco-friendly-shrimp/1348584 https://www.gourmets.net/salon-gourmets/2025/exhibitors-cata...
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago
    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.
    - n3storm 11mo ago
      Is a regular sea variety. Nothing crazy.
  - n3storm 11mo ago
    Litopenaeus vannamei https://norayseafood.es/en/producto/raw-shrimp-40-60-pieces-per-kg-in-1-kg-tray/ https://norayseafood.es/en/producto/raw-shrimp-40-60-pieces-...
    - 11mo ago

Faelon 11mo ago

The easiest solution: Don't eat fish. Or our oceans may never recover.

ActivePattern 11mo ago
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 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
- goda90 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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 https://www.fda.gov/media/80297/download [2] Jensen et al., Nutrients 2020 — https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123665 https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123665

gorfian_robot 11mo ago

feeding chickens to fish doesn't sound sustainable ...

RegW 11mo ago
... and just a by-product of chicken production at that. Gotta eat more chickens to save the oceans.

cryoshon 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  The color in the farmed Salmon is the same compounds as the wild: https://www.dal.ca/news/2023/03/21/farmed-salmon-colour-healthy-antioxidant.html https://www.dal.ca/news/2023/03/21/farmed-salmon-colour-heal... The amounts differ, and the farm feed may be synthetic.
Aunche 11mo ago
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.

xhkkffbf 11mo ago

Has anyone had much luck raising crickets or other insects for feed? Fish like trout feast on them.

anon84873628 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  Why can't the bait fish eat the fly larva?
- goda90 11mo ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbzedftrQJw

MichaelNolan 11mo ago

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/2025-08-17-WildTypeSalmon.md https://github.com/Michael-Nolan/Public/blob/main/Notes/2025...

why_at 11mo ago
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 11mo ago

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 11mo ago

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 https://bapcertification.org/Home [1]https://bapcertification.org/Downloadables/pdf/standards/BAP%20Feed%20Mill%20Standard%20-%20Issue%203.3.pdf https://bapcertification.org/Downloadables/pdf/standards/BAP...

adverbly 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
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-industry-others-challenge-29-billion-coastal-restoration-2024-01-11/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/louisiana-oyster-in...
seec 11mo ago
But oysters are really not good. It tastes weird with too strong a note of salty water and has a pretty bad texture that makes masticating unenjoyable. They are poor man's food that got super expensive with clever marketing and supply management (and since they need to be alive the supply chain is extremely complicated and expensive, you can't store them for long). If you live near a sea and can get them dirt cheap why not, but if you live far into the land, they are mostly a waste of good money and a way for pretentious people to appear fancy/rich at the Christmas holiday.
- Crestwave 11mo ago
  There are lots of ways to cook oysters, which significantly lessens the briny taste and gelatinous texture. While it's true that their rise in the West was mostly from clever marketing, oysters are just considered normal seafood in many countries and are cooked into dishes. But yes, the premium price due to the raw oyster trend makes it not worth it if you live far away from the sea.
  - seec 11mo ago
    I'm sure there are some good ways to make it quite palatable but the issue is really the price that makes no sense. In France, last time I calculated, they are more expensive by weight than a prime cut of beef, that's just dumb. If they would make cooked products with them at a decent price I could have an interest, but since they make so much money by selling it as a delicacy with a premium price it's never going to happen. It's just not a very competitive protein source, regardless of the taste/enjoyability and that's the issue in the end...