Despite receiving more than $25 million in U.S. taxpayer funding, millions more in private investment, and extensive research and political support from the U.S. government, the open ocean aquaculture industry has failed to demonstrate the practice is environmentally sustainable, financially viable, or technically possible on a commercial scale.

The nation’s four main offshore aquaculture operations still find themselves plagued by an assortment of difficulties. From shark encounters and unexplained fish deaths, to financial troubles and broken equipment––even a tainted Chinese feed scare––these small, experimental operations are far from showing they can meet soaring demand for seafood and ease pressure on alarmingly overharvested wild fish populations.

Located in Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Puerto Rico, none of the four aquaculture facilities is operating near full capacity, making it impossible to draw any conclusions about environmental sustainability. All claim waste from the submerged cages is causing little or no harm to water quality, sea life, or ecosystems in general. But with a total of only about 15 cages, the farms represent a tiny fraction of the thousands of cages that the industry and its government backers envision building along U.S. coasts in the coming years.

Further, all of these operations have received government subsidies, making it impossible to demonstrate whether they can survive under true free market conditions. Each pound of fish sold by one facility costs about $3,000 in U.S. taxpayer dollars to produce.

The government hopes these and other offshore fish farms can help reduce the country’s $9.2 billion seafood trade deficit. But the U.S. operations mainly grow expensive boutique fish destined for high-end restaurants and sushi bars, not varieties with widespread appeal that could have the broad economic impact as claimed.

All four U.S. operations claim to be raising their fish sustainably, and two have said their fish are essentially “organic”. But these cage-raised fish cannot credibly be considered organic, due to concerns over fish waste, ocean water containing PCBs and other toxins, and use of feed derived from wild fish populations, some already depleted.

Fish farming itself is nothing new. Five thousand years ago, Chinese villagers trapped carp in artificial lakes formed when flooded rivers receded. Around 600 A.D., Hawaii’s Menehune people built an enormous fish pond on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, so the legend goes, by erecting a 900-foot-long wall out of lava rock overnight.

The form of aquaculture practiced today in Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Puerto Rico is something quite new. The first experimental cages were deployed off the coast of Washington state in 1989, and the first commercial operation opened in 2001. Offshore or open ocean aquaculture––growing fish in nets or cages far off the coast––is different from more familiar types of fish farming. Salmon farms also use nets in the ocean but are usually near shore. Trout and catfish are raised in artificial ponds. Shrimp are produced in natural or artificial ponds along or near the coast.

All these types of farms present unique pollution problems. Salmon farms are thought to spread disease and parasites, and escaped farmed fish are prone to mate with wild salmon, making them genetically weaker. Because of these and other problems associated with traditional fish farms, the federal government is promoting open ocean aquaculture as an environmentally friendly alternative and as a way to meet growing U.S. demand for seafood.

In 1999, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called for a quintupling of the nation’s annual aquaculture production by the year 2025––from $900 million a year to $5 billion. Believing the pursuit of offshore aquaculture can help achieve this goal, NOAA officials are backing legislation to allow fish farms to be constructed between three and 200 miles from the U.S. coast.

Aquaculture, in all of its forms, was a $78 billion industry in 2005, with Asia generating four-fifths of the cultivated fish and shellfish in the world. The United States produces a relative pittance, just $1.1 billion. This means domestic aquaculture operators will have to dramatically pick up the pace if they want to meet the government’s 2025 benchmark.

NOAA officials think open ocean aquaculture can drive this growth, and they have praised the four experimental facilities as models for future expansion of the practice.

“We are watching innovation take place here,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Charles Gutierrez, who oversees NOAA, said recently while visiting an aquaculture operation in Hawaii. “I’m very impressed. What a future.” ¹

Based on the present state of affairs, Gutierrez may be speaking too soon.

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