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Proponents of offshore aquaculture favor allowing this practice of raising fish in net pens or cages between three and 200 miles from shore in large part because they claim it will boost the American economy and create new jobs. When the U.S. Offshore Aquaculture bill, developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was sent to Congress, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez said: “Today’s action will create jobs and revenues for coastal communities and U.S. businesses by allowing for the expansion of an underutilized industry.” ¹ Unfortunately, previous international experience indicates that it is actually more likely that offshore aquaculture will diminish local jobs than create them.

By reducing the size of fishing grounds, decreasing the availability of wild stocks, and flooding the market with fish products, offshore aquaculture will threaten the jobs of many commercial fisher men and women. The pollution that fish farms create and the sharks they attract could also threaten the jobs of people in the tourism industry. Compounding the problem, offshore aquaculture operations likely will be highly automated and supported by foreign investment and perhaps staff, so they are unlikely to create many replacement jobs for those lost.

Offshore Aquaculture Could Eliminate Jobs

Offshore aquaculture, also known as open ocean aquaculture, could threaten the livelihoods of fisher men and women. Far from generating jobs in coastal areas and profits for U.S. businesses, as proponents claim, open ocean aquaculture on a large scale could harm many communities reliant on the fishing industry.

An economist at the University of Alaska concluded that offshore aquaculture is unlikely to develop as a small, family–owned business, and is more likely to be the domain of large–scale corporations.² Because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is pushing legislation that would open offshore aquaculture to foreign investors,³ it is possible that many of these corporations will not even be U.S.–based, which is the case with the salmon industry. Around half a dozen multinational corporations account for two-thirds of the world’s salmon and trout production.⁴ Foreign investors could use their own money and staffing to grow the fish, and then send it abroad for processing, leaving the United States with little other than a devastated wild fish population and polluted oceans.

Additionally, offshore aquaculture threatens pre–existing small fishing businesses by decreasing access to ocean spaces and abundant wild fish stocks. The U.S. Offshore Aquaculture legislation allows for industrial fish farms to be placed in areas that could otherwise be used for fishing. Feeding the carnivorous fish species that will be grown in these cages requires many smaller feed fish to be caught. Over–fishing such smaller fish disrupts the ecological balance of the oceans and takes away from the food supply for larger wild fish; leading to unhealthy and decreased populations of these species.⁵

As these essential resources are being depleted, commercial fisher men and women could be faced with the impossible challenge of having to catch more fish in order to maintain profitability in a market overrun by fish grown in offshore aquaculture operations. Even the plan that the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, one of eight regional councils Congress established to help manage U.S. fisheries, is promoting to streamline the permitting of offshore fish farms in the Gulf admits that the increased supply of aquaculture fish in the Gulf may decrease the price commercial fishermen receive for their harvest if the supply does not enter the market slowly, if new markets are not created, or if demand for fish does not increase.⁶

A feasibility study based on the Hawaii Offshore Aquaculture Research Project, which later became Cates International, one of the four open ocean aquaculture operations in America, warned that the livelihood of local fishing industries could be compromised by the depressed market value of indigenous species resulting from the mass–production of Pacific threadfin in offshore aquaculture operations.⁷ A report issued by the Congressional Research Service came to similar conclusions, predicting that: “Open ocean aquaculture could replace current fish production (from commercial fishing) instead of supplementing (adding to) fish production, with little or no change in domestic fish production/value, especially if open ocean aquaculture development is not compatible with existing capture fisheries.” ⁸

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Originally uploaded by HRC.

The expansion of near–shore aquaculture in Alaska, Washington, and British Columbia provides an example of the ramifications that open ocean fish farming could have on all American fishing communities. In the late 1980s, the worldwide expansion of aquaculture increased salmon production fivefold, while the market share of wild–caught salmon from British Columbia, Alaska, and Washington State has steadily declined since.⁹ Between 1992 and 2001, increased worldwide aquaculture production caused the value of harvested Alaskan salmon to plunge from $600 million to a bit more than $200 million.¹⁰ In response, the Alaska’s government was forced to declare a state of emergency in 2003 and offer relief programs to commercial salmon fisher men and women.¹¹ To prevent the problem from getting any worse, the governor asked the U.S. Secretary of Commerce for a five–year moratorium on the development of offshore aquaculture.¹² In Washington and British Columbia, low fish stocks and declining prices caused by competition from aquaculture operations have forced some boat owners to participate in boat buy–back programs.¹³

Offshore Aquaculture is Likely to Create Few Jobs

By driving commercial fisher men and women out of business, offshore aquaculture likely will replace fishing rather than supplement it. As it eliminates this industry and the corresponding jobs, it will create very few replacement jobs in aquaculture. Industrial fish farms likely will be highly automated with few labor needs. According to the Congressional Research Service, there is much research going into ways to decrease the need for human labor in fish farming, particularly with respect to feeding and harvesting, “to the extent that few workers may be needed.” ¹⁴ Instead of hiring various employees to measure out feed, administer it at the proper times, clean out waste from each cage, and harvest fish when they are ready for consumption, offshore aquaculture operations may be able to rely on computers to do the work through “satellite–controlled robotic systems attached to the offshore cages.” ¹⁵

History tells us that no form of aquaculture, including offshore, will provide as many jobs as fishing has. Statistics from many countries show that as aquaculture increases, employment either remains stagnant or decreases. In the 1990s, salmon production tripled in British Columbia, but not a single new job was created.¹⁶ As aquaculture in this Canadian province increased, wild fish landings decreased. The Fisheries Centre reports that this is probably due to a lack of wild salmon abundance, not a lack of effort.¹⁷ In Scotland, salmon farming tripled between 1989 and 1997, but employment decreased.¹⁸ The aquaculture industry in Norway expanded tenfold between 1985 and 2000, but employment went down 20 percent.¹⁹ Sweden exhibited the same pattern between 1993 and 2003, with employment in salmon farming decreasing as production increased.²⁰

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Originally uploaded by takomabibelot.

The existing offshore operations in the United States employ a relatively small number of people. Kona Blue, in Hawaii, employs only 45 people and expects to produce a total of 650 tons of fish a year in 2007.^21,22 Cates International, also in Hawaii, has only seven employees to produce 750 tons of fish annually.²³ 

If open ocean aquaculture were allowed in U.S. waters, it might create some jobs, but they could be problematic for a number of reasons. Offshore aquaculture operations could require people to catch feed fish, haul supplies, or dive down to clean the cages, but most fisher men and women would probably not find these to be desirable job replacements.²⁴ It is also likely that, due to the inherent differences between fishing and fish farming, many of the new jobs would require a skill set incompatible with the skills that fisher men and women already possess.²⁵

The bulk of offshore aquaculture jobs would be in other sections of the economy, most notably in processing.²⁶ Unfortunately, the United States ships 12 percent of domestic wild caught seafood to China each year for processing, where it can be done cheaply, and then re–imports it for American consumption.²⁷ This means that many of those new processing jobs would be created abroad.²⁸ Even if all of these fish were processed in the United States, fisher men and women would not be able to transition into processing jobs easily, because of the difference in skill sets.

Offshore Aquaculture Threatens Jobs in the Tourism Industry

In 2000, 1.18 million people were employed in ocean tourism in the United States.²⁹ It is an extremely important industry for many coastal communities. By polluting offshore areas and attracting dangerous sharks to aquaculture net pens full of fish, offshore aquaculture could significantly damage the U.S. coastal tourism industry. Not only could it threaten the beauty and safety of beaches, but open ocean aquaculture could also take control of space used directly for tourism activities. In the Gulf of Mexico alone, recreational fishing brought a total of $5.6 billion into the regional economy.³⁰ Aquaculture farms could be built in areas previously used for sport fishing and recreational boating, eliminating the jobs of people employed in this sector of tourism and preventing this money from entering coastal communities.

Conclusion

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s legislation on offshore aquaculture, if approved by Congress and signed into law, could threaten the economies of coastal fishing communities across the nation. Offshore aquaculture threatens the entire fishing industry and the livelihoods of both fisher men and women and tourism workers. It not only eliminates existing jobs, but also fails to introduce a sufficient number of new jobs into the American economy.