Chapter 14. Chapter 14: Fisheries and Aquaculture
What is aquaculture and how might it ease the strain on at-risk...?
Guiding Question 14.5
What is aquaculture, and how might it ease the strain on at-risk fisheries? What trade-offs does aquaculture involve?
Why You Should Care
Aquaculture is for aquatic species what agriculture is for farmland and terrestrial species—a human-managed ecosystem for raising food. The fish or invertebrate species (like shrimp or molluscs) are protected from predators and then harvested when they reach an adult size.
Aquaculture mimics marine ecosystems and uses them for nutrients and waste recycling. Aquaculture is becoming more common as costs are decreasing with larger aquaculture "farms." But costs are still high enough that only the most valuable species are raised, and these tend to be higher trophic level species. Those species require more food and nutrients, which are typically coming from other wild-caught fish or bycatch. These higher TL species also release larger amounts of waste that the marine ecosystem must recycle.
If aquaculture is to become common enough to replace fish protein from wild-caught fish and give fisheries time to recover, then it must become more sustainable. Technology and research are finding solutions, but for that to happen, consumers must embrace those changes and choose sustainably harvested or grown fish.
Question Test Your Vocabulary
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Question 14.1
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Question 14.6
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Short-Answer Questions
Tuna refers to a group of 50 related marine fish species that are commercially very important. Tuna are large, high trophic level fish that range in size from 20 to 1200 pounds. They are also very fast swimmers, which helps them to be efficient predators of smaller fish. This speed also forces fisherman to use large nets to catch them in any great number.
Tuna catch tripled between 1940 and 1970 (to 1 million tons) with the rise in usage of seine nets (wide nets that are used to fish out specific depths of the ocean). Between 1990 and 2010, the catch rose again to almost 4 million tons globally. This rise follows the use of large industrial fishing vessels that range across whole oceans, following schools of tuna.
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3a. Tuna is so valuable that it probably should have an international body made up of nations that fish tuna to protect its numbers. If tuna numbers were to crash the way that cod did, it would have widespread economic impacts.
3b. Overfishing would be illegal only if there were agreed-upon quotas and legal authority given to not only observe, but also punish, those who harvested too much. This would involve a new international cooperation that doesn’t really exist for marine species and countries agreeing to be bound by the new laws.