What's a Big Box Boat?

By Brett Tolley

NAMA's Community Organizer

The other day, a member of the New England Fisheries Management Council caught up with me in the parking lot outside a fisheries meeting. He said, “Brett. C’mon, what is all this big box bull@#$%? We don’t have any big box boats here in New England.”

I said "yes we do have big box bull@#$% happening in New England."

Too many people think when we talk about Big Box Boats we are talking just about the size of the boat. Yes, size does matter, but what we are really talking about are values. And one of those values is about matching the size of the boat - or the scale of its operation - to the scale of the marine ecosystem. That means some boats may have to fish somewhere else, but that should be driven by what the ecosystem can handle not by movement of global capital.

We know the terms Big Box Boats along with a fisherman-led petition we helped start called ‘Fight the Big Box Boats’, has ruffled some feathers. But we also know that it has empowered some fishermen and fishing communities. For every time this work is called bull@#$%, there are others who think it’s overdue. In fact, some fishermen have told us they are glad we are putting out phrases like Big Box Boats and Who Fishes Matters because it’s liberating them to say what they’ve been wanting to say for a long time.

Still we are pushed to define what we mean when we say Big Box Boats. Fair enough. But instead of getting caught up in a definition war with folks who want to use semantics as a stall tactic, we refer to values and definitions of Big Box vs. local operations that others have already come up with. For those, we turn to our friends at the Institute for Local Self Reliance, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, Sustainable Business Network and others. The values they’ve begun to measure include:

•       Local vs. non local economic impact
•       Employment
•       Wages and Benefits
•       Social and Civil Well Being
•       Environmental impact
•       Food systems impact
•      Community impact

In the world of fisheries, some of these values present themselves in different ways. From an environmental impact perspective, ‘Big Box Boats’ values are ones that allow fishing at a scale that the ecosystem cannot take. Recent policies that have opened up the doors for offshore boats to come inshore bringing an inappropriate scale of operations into the Gulf of Maine fishing grounds are a good example. These policies are responsible for wiping out 15 years of rebuilding efforts. So now all fishermen have to pay the price by facing severe cuts in their quotas.

When it comes to wages, benefits, employment, and social and civil well being we know the ‘Big Box Boat’ values have led to wage depressions in many fisheries, specially the surf clam industry where pay is fairly stark. In the New England groundfish fleet we know that crews are getting paid less to work harder and that leasing costs come out of crew salary. We know some boats are fishing in the red because they are not getting a fair price for their catch; the same catch that we as consumers pay big money for thinking it's all going back to the fishermen. We also know that captains are cutting costs by taking on less crew, which often means fishing alone and compromising their own safety.

Another consequence of the Big Box Boat mentality is seeing fewer and fewer actual fishermen owning boats and or permits, or even showing up to policy meetings and instead they are replaced by absentee owners, and at meetings with lawyers, prospectors, investors, NGO advocates, and industry lobbyists that don't always represent them.

I know I’m only scratching the surface here. Over the course of the next few months we’ll explore each of these values more in depth, but for now I hope we have brought a little more clarify to what we mean by Big Box Boats.

Remember: it’s about values not inches.

Salmon in the Crosshairs

Sarah clamming in Rhode Island

By Sarah Schumann

Commercial fisherwoman

Guest Blogger

For the past five years, I have been part of a wondrous migration that takes place each summer in Bristol Bay, Alaska. It is a rush of movement that takes place by sea, by land, and by air; a mad dash triggered by a swarming of fish and followed by the predators that chase them – including the fishermen and cannery workers who make their way here from neighboring villages and around the globe to harvest, package, and ship this nourishing fish to dinner plates worldwide.

My own role in that mass migration takes me from my year-round home of Rhode Island to a salmon cannery on the edge of the Nushagak River, which drains into Bristol Bay. Once there, I am in charge of steam-cooking the sealed cans of salmon as they come off the processing line.  I am one of the tens of thousands of people dependent on the summer salmon run for my year-round economic wellbeing. It is because of my humble appreciation for that resource that sustains so many, and in solidarity with the residents and commercial fishermen of the Bristol Bay region, that I ask all members of the New England fishing community to take a stand against the proposed Pebble Mine.

The moon over Nushagak River, the last thing Sarah sees every night
while working at the cannery in Alaska.

Since the early 2000s, the Pebble Limited Partnership (a joint venture of Northern Dynasty Minerals and Anglo-American) has planned to construct a copper, gold, and molybdenum mine near Lake Iliamna, at the headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak Rivers. These waters, which flow into Bristol Bay, are prime spawning grounds for salmon, and Lake Iliamna is known as the largest incubator of salmon in the world. When the Pebble Mine is formally proposed and evaluated, it will benefit from the support of many powerful interests. This is why many Bristol Bay communities and salmon fishermen are giving their all to the struggle to defeat the mine.

The environmental risks posed by such a mine are numerous. If constructed, the mine itself would remove 87 miles of salmon streams and thousands of acres of wetlands.  In addition, mining activities would produce acidic and metals-laden waters, which would degrade water quality downstream if released into the environment. Waste rock piles and tailings dams would require management in perpetuity, long after the hundred-year lifespan of the mine, lest they leach or spill contaminated residues into the watershed.

Pebble Mine would be the largest gold mine and the fifth largest copper mine in the world. The mining companies and their allies in government see greater value in short-term profits made by extracting minerals from the ground than in the long-term value that is already being provided by one of the world’s last remaining healthy salmon-based ecosystems – an ecosystem that supports 12,000 commercial fishermen and is the lifeblood of two Native Alaskan communities -- the Yup’ik and Dena’ina, two of the last intact salmon-based cultures in the world. For the commercial and subsistence fishers of Bristol Bay, it would be unthinkable to put this miraculous and life-sustaining renewable resource at risk.

For more information or to take action online, visit the website of the Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay, an advocacy group founded expressly to protect fishing livelihoods from the Pebble Mine: http://fishermenforbristolbay.org. This coming Wednesday, I will be hosting a screening of the documentary Red Gold at the Hope Artiste Village (1005 Main St.) in Pawtucket, RI, at 7:30 PM. Please join me!

It's a Fish Eat Fish World

By Shanna Luster
NAMA's Intern
The Lab School of Washington

As part of my internship with NAMA, I'm learning about the marine ecosystem. And in the process I have learned that the ocean is a fish-eat-fish world and at the heart of that food web are pelagic fish.

Pelagic fish are the food source of most bony fish, and other ocean animals, like sea birds and sharks. Pelagic fish live in the pelagic zone, which goes from the surface almost to the bottom of the ocean. The pelagic zone can have up to five horizontal layers defined by the amount of light they reserve from the surface. These layers from top to bottom include Epipelagic (sunlight), Mesopelagic (twilight), Bathypelagic (midnight), Abyssopelagic (lower midnight). Pelagic fish range in the size from Blue fin Tuna to a sardine. Pelagic fish numbers are dropping at an alarming rate because of industrial scale purse seines and midwater trawl equipment. Also, global warming is changing the temperature of the ocean, meaning pelagic fish migration patterns change. Since many animals eat pelagic fish, this would also impact there migration patterns.

Humpback whales travel many miles to eat herring. Humpback whales lunge out of the water forcing the herring to go down their throats. When the humpback lunges out of the water to catch the herring most of the herring fly out of the water which gives the sea birds, like the brown pelican a chance to grab the flying  fish. The herring that is left over from the whales' feast is then taken by big schools of bluefin tuna. This symbiotic food chain is an example of how essential pelagic fish are. If all of the Pelagic fish leave the oceans, all of the ocean life will be affected, as will we. 

Hey Big Box Boats - We Got a Bone to Pick

By Russell Kingman

Fisherman, Chatham MA

Guest Blogger

I was down at the dock the other day talking with a scalloper. He said, "Listen to this! So this rich guy has a "ne'er-do-well" son who barely makes it through college. The father doesn't know what to do with his lazy spoiled son so he buys him a scallop business." Incredulously I ask, "He bought him a scallop boat? What could be a harder, more labor intensive job than that of a scalloper?” "No, no, no!" says my friend, “the father didn't buy the kid a boat......he bought him scallop quota."

Russell Kingman aboard the F/V Lester F.
Photo Credit: Shareen Davis

I had to pause and digest the absurdity of this anecdote. It turns out that buying up scallop quota is like buying stock on the stock market. You can own the rights to a stock (in the case of scallops owners control a % of the total allowable catch per year) and these rights can be traded, bought, and sold.

The two of us sat on the dock, bantering about the absurd situation that has developed in fisheries. Walmart is investing in it, Wall Street, and nameless other firms are buying fish quotas along all our coasts. Why?

Fisheries have been commoditized. It just makes me crazy to think that some large company in the mid-west, or Asia or anywhere, could own the fishing rights where I live, and I'd have to lease these rights in order to put my nets in the water... and then hand over most of the profits from my labor when the day is done. 

That's why I have a bone to pick with big box boat fisheries.

Recently I attended ‘Terre Madre’ in Torino, Italy. This massive Slow Food conference brings together smaller-scale food producers and advocates from around the world. I was there to participate in a growing movement called Slow Fish.

In my view, the purpose of Slow Fish is to find ways to save smaller-scale fisheries from extinction. Over the course of 5 days together with 50 other fisher folk from around the globe, we identified issues and solutions that small-scale fisheries share in common. Among the most pressing of topics was the corporatizing of fisheries and what this will ultimately do to the small-scale fisheries. Which btw, represents 90% of all fisheries in the world yet only accounts for a small fraction of the total catch.

Ultimately, we see a growing trend of small-scale fishers becoming share-croppers on the ocean and the rights, or quota, funnel into the hands of a wealthy few. Let's face it. Large corporations will squeeze any possible profit out of the fishery. Does anyone really believe that big box business will take care of the environment? Employees? Community?

It’s no wonder why so many fishermen I know are pessimistic about the future health of the ocean and coastal communities. Can you blame them?

That's why I feel that Terre Madre.... and other networks that are uniting small-scale fishers to take back their access and control over the local food system are so important. Quota or rights to fish should be controlled by the community, not an investment firm or the son of a wealthy entrepreneur. In Alaska, fishers were able to legislate that you cannot control quota UNLESS YOU ARE ACTUALLY ON THE BOAT. That is brilliant! That's one of the keys to returning quota back to the fishers themselves.

There were many other subjects discussed at Terra Madre concerning small fisheries. For now, I just wanted to point out how disastrous it will be if we continue the trend of corporatizing our fisheries.  It doesn't work for communities and it won't work for the environment either.

NOTE FROM NAMA
Thanks Russell! Folks can learn more about our Who Fishes Matters campaign and take immediate action to fight Big Box Boats and support community-based fisheries by clicking here: http://namanet.org/our-work/who-fishes-matters-campaign

AS THE PLANET CHANGES, WHO FISHES MATTERS

by Boyce Thorne Miller
NAMA's Science Coordinator

As the hybrid hurricane Sandy recently demonstrated to Northeasterners, Bob Dylan got it just about right – our waters are indeed growing and changing. Although Dylan may not have been specifically referring to the ocean, it applies. And, in our use of ocean resources, it’s time to swim with the currents of change.

In the face of environmental change, ecosystems must be resilient to remain healthy and functional, and likewise fisheries. In order for fisheries to be resilient and to enhance the resilience of ecosystems, the fishing fleet must be flexible and management must be nimble and responsive. That is not the direction they’ve been heading.

Resilience of an ecosystem is its capacity to respond to major changes or disruptions by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Biological resilience, we know, is enhanced by a healthy and diverse complement of species—such rich biodiversity enables ecosystems to be flexible and adaptable when environmental changes occur.  Similarly, a flexible fleet that can and will disperse and differentiate itself in harmony with changing spatial patterns of the ecosystem and its fish populations is likely to be more resilient to environmental changes on a wide range of scales.

A diverse fleet of smaller boats--even a sizable, though not unlimited, number--are able to fish a diversity of species throughout the year and with smaller, diverse, switchable gear. Are you beginning to see the value of diversity? This strategy avoids overly intensive fishing on select areas that can lead to pock marks of fish depletions scattered across an ecosystem. A diverse smaller-scale fleet that is attentive to what is happening in the fishery ecosystem can be flexible enough to reduce pressure on vulnerable species, to quickly switch to new species as seasons change, and to adapt as environmental change brings in new species and drives changes in relative abundances of fishery species.

Since fisheries are responsive to markets, flexibility is important there as well. The fishery in general is more resilient when it can serve diverse local markets flexible enough to vary and value a wider selection of species. This is a route to effective ecosystem based fisheries management

Contrary to this desirable pattern, consolidation of the fishing fleet has resulted as management has continually favored bigger boats, regionalized wholesale markets, and global trade of fish. But an ever-shrinking fleet, composed primarily of big boats, has little resilience in the face of large or small ecosystem changes. By nature, large-scale fishing depletes target fish populations even further, as it concentrates heavy fishing pressure on fewer and fewer hot spots where fish are dense enough to be profitable. And at the same time this design of fishing, encouraged by fisheries management, continues to devalue co-caught species and discard or otherwise waste them.

Total catch of regional fleets has continued to be severely restricted because fish populations are not recovering fast enough or are continuing to decline. And the small boat fleet is dwindling, as management measures make it too expensive for them to stay in business. The movement of fisheries management toward catch limits has unnecessarily turned in the direction of privatization, which drives access to fish (a.k.a. shares) into the hands of those who can afford it—ever fewer boats and larger operations, targeting fewer species of fish for growing global markets.

Even as it shrinks, the fleet becomes ever more efficient at catching ever fewer species. This contributes to destabilization of ecosystems, so it cannot persist. A consolidated, monolithic fleet is a short-term fleet and must roam to stay afloat.

In times of environmental change and persistently limited fisheries resources, only flexible and resilient, smaller-boat fleets grounded in communities, will survive and foster the revival of diverse and vibrant local marine ecosystems. So it does indeed matter who catches the annual allowable catch and how and where they do it. As the planet changes, who fishes matters.

Fishing, Food Sovereignty, and La Via Campesina

By guest blogger Jennifer Brewer

Assistant Professor, Department of Geography

Assistant Scientist, Institute for Coastal Science and Policy

East Carolina University

NAMA recently had a great opportunity to send a representative to the North America Region and International Policy meetings of La Via Campesina in Mexico City, and as a long time collaborator with NAMA I was the fortunate person to be this representative.  We owe this occasion to the National Family Farm Coalition, of which NAMA is a member group.

La Via Campesina can be translated as the Peasant Way, or maybe the Country Route.  It is an international network of groups working for food sovereignty – the idea that ordinary people should be able to control the production, harvesting, and consumption of food themselves.  La Via opposes genetically modified crops, the consolidation of agricultural land through political and economic pressures on small and medium sized farms, global warming, and depletion of natural resources.  It supports fair treatment of rural workers, human rights, and opportunities for new farmers.  Many of its member groups run programs to strengthen rural communities, discourage outmigration, encourage sustainable food production, educate consumers, create local and regional food markets, and protect human rights.  So many people affiliated with the movement are doing such amazing work, in all corners of the world.  It was a deeply humbling, moving, encouraging, and inspiring experience to meet some of their representatives in Mexico.  

So what does this have to do with fishing?  A lot, as it turns out.  First, La Via Campesina has been a movement of both farmers and fisherpeople, but the fishing part has been less active. Until now! There are many commonalities between our fishing and farming experiences, but three I want to talk about are strengthening food communities, participatory governance, and the need for social change strategies that work on multiple fronts.  

Stronger Food Communities

Communities reliant on fishing, farming, and forestry have independently come to similar conclusions that their long term interests are best served by diversified economies.  Natural resource businesses are often more flexible in adapting to social and ecological change if they are small to medium scale, can shift production among a range of species, use appropriate technology, and don’t carry too much debt.  Communities as a whole are stronger if they include both experienced and newer producers, and a number of business models.  This means providing opportunities for new businesses and innovations.  Consumers are better off if they have diversified options, from a number of producers, and aren’t just stuck with whatever the multinational conglomerates are determined to sell them, by hook or by crook.

In fishing, we’ve seen what federal investment tax breaks did in the 1980s.  They left us with a fleet of large boats owned by non-operators investors, with technology capable of wiping out the entire groundfishery.  The owner-operated and smaller boat fleets are hanging on, but the price of quota, the politics of sectors (a new fishery management scheme in New England), and the depletion of some fish populations have made it impossible for most young people to start their own businesses.  Similarly, one of the biggest obstacles preventing many family farmers from implementing more environmentally sustainable food production is the huge debt they owe on land and machinery – making it hard to take the risk of experimenting with new crops or cultivation practices, and hard for young people to even think about farming.  In the food distribution system, we’ve seen that multinational food conglomerates promote foods that are laden with bad fats, excessive salt, sugars, and starches, pesticides, preservatives, colorings, genetically modified ingredients, and various additives.  Our blind trust in these companies leaves us with serious health problems, including obesity, diabetes, allergies, and cancer.

But the up side is that people who care about food sovereignty are building alternative routes to enter fishing and farming industries.  States and non-profits have started fishing permit banks with the idea that less expensive fishery access should help support new entrants.  Similarly, farming organizations across New England and the Americas have apprenticeships, internships, training programs, experimental farms, seed loans, and land trusts.  These kinds of programs offer new fishermen and farmers the space they need to learn, experiment, and take risks.  Community Supported Agriculture and Community Supported Fisheries projects are providing us with many new shopping alternatives, and other local markets for healthy and sustainably produced goods are thriving.  We need more such opportunities, but at least these models are helping us to learn from our mistakes, and figure out what works.

Political Engagement

A lot of work by NAMA and our collaborators is very specific to fishing – advocating for particular regulatory issues, developing alternative seafood markets, educating consumers on where their fish comes from and why they should care.  But a lot of our work is as much about bigger picture food system and natural resource issues.  Our work persistently asks who will be the future harvesters and producers of food, and whether or not we are on track to sustain food production systems on land and at sea.  We help consumers understand that their decisions about what to eat, and where to buy food, affect how that food is produced, and what food producing businesses, communities, and land and sea are like – how they steward environmental resources, and how they treat neighbors and co-workers.  We help people think about what kind of society we want to live in, what kind of planet we want to leave behind.  So many of you are doing so much to build new food systems, and this mostly local work is so important.  

It seems to me, though, that many of these experiments are working because they put people in closer contact with each other, on a personal level.  They make people more active participants in their eating decisions.  They make people think about things they otherwise take for granted.  They allow people to make more informed decisions about, and perhaps have more influence on, their food supplies.  If we can do that on the personal level, at the local level, can we also take some lessons learned to a larger scale of change?  People are learning more about their food, and helping more to produce and prepare it.  Do they now have things to say that are relevant about the kinds of food that are available to our children in school, to people receiving social services, to other public and quasi-public institutions such as hospitals, prisons, universities, museums, and government buildings?  Can we take some of our new-found knowledge and will to the political level?  Can we create legal structures that allow more public participation in food system decision making across the board, not just in our own homes and neighborhoods?  Not to tell other people what to eat, but to offer them more choices, and more information?  Can we develop policies that foster even faster growth of sustainable and responsible food systems across national and international levels?  Can we start assisting change from the top down as well as the bottom up?  Can we turn all this amazing human capital into political capital?  Can we envision new ways of making food-related decisions as a broader society, just as we’ve envisioned (and now practice!) new ways of making food decisions as individuals?  Can we question the existing structures that govern food systems at a grand scale and propose more democratic and participatory alternatives?  

NAMA's Who Fishes Matters Fight the Big Box Boat banner amongst all the other banners in Mexico City.

Multiple Fronts

Lastly, I am reminded how necessary it is that we work toward food sovereignty on multiple fronts.  We need people who want to produce food more sustainably, and are willing to take financial risks to do so.  We need people who want to market food locally and educate consumers, and will invest the time and energy.  We need people with the courage to take to the streets and bring public attention to realities that some people might find easier to forget.  We need people in the media – writing for newspapers, posting video and audio on the internet, blogging.  We need people who will run for public office, or campaign for candidates who understand these issues.  We need people who know how to lobby – to explain to public servants how some policies and regulations move the public interest forward and others set us back.  We need scientists – ones who care more about reality of lived experience than about the abstractions that might earn them promotions and honors.  We need community organizers, to make sure the food sovereignty movement reaches as many people as possible.  We need teachers, who can help the next generation figure out which pieces of their social and environmental inheritance they want to embrace, and what they want to change.  We need cooks and chefs, in homes and restaurants, to help people enjoy foods that are both delicious and responsible.  We need bookkeepers, shopkeepers, laborers, investors, all sorts of people with different skills and talents to make food sovereignty happen, to build a strong movement.

So I’ll get off my soapbox now.  I was just so impressed that when I told people in NAMA’s network about my recent acquaintance with La Via Campesina, so many responded with such enthusiasm and appreciation.  Several people offered very specific comments that helped me to think more about what the trip means for our work collective work.  Because of the generous support and commentaries in response to my trip, AND because the work La Via Campesina is doing is so inspiring and encouraging, I am especially pleased for this opportunity to collect some of those thoughts here on this blog and offer them for more public consideration.  There are moments in life when we find ourselves in situations that seem to be etching themselves deeply into our memories, like our senses are suddenly more awake than before, like our whole lives are shifting course a little.  This trip felt like one of those moments… 

Farmed Fish Follies, Part III: The US Plan for Aquaculture Development

by Boyce Thorne Miller
NAMA's Science Coordinator




NAMA recently submitted comments to the Joint Subcommittee on Aquaculture, an interagency committee associated with the Whitehouse Office of Science and Technology, on the Draft National Aquaculture Research and Development Strategic Plan. As I read through the proposed plan I realized how old I am - old enough to know that exciting and innovative research that could have inspired a different path for aquaculture in this country and the world has been forgotten or never seen by most, though not by me.

Some of that promising work was prevalent in the 60s and 70s, when efforts such as the New Alchemists in Falmouth, MA and the Environmental Systems Laboratory at nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution led by such creative scientists as John Todd and John Ryther respectively. The influence of visionaries like Buckminster Fuller is obvious in some of the aquaculture designs that emerged during that time. I myself was involved in a bit of multi-species, land-based aquaculture research, though it was far from the forefront of all that was being explored at the time.

The US government was putting money into many of these research efforts, which included, among other innovations, the integration of fish aquaculture into farm and greenhouse operations so that wastes were recycled productively; the use of aquaculture to treat sewage wastes; experimenting with a diversity of species; and polyculture (several different species grown together or in connected sequential cultures) to clean water and/or grow marketable products -- all these in systems that created no net waste and used no valuable wild feed resources. They were enhancements to the environment while providing functioning living systems and useful products, including food, seaweed extracts,  attractive functioning wetlands, etc. Both fresh water and marine aquaculture systems were designed. The federal government while, investing in research that produced innovation and potential for the future, ended its investment there and did not support the development of these designs into commercial-scale systems. Some researchers and visionaries like John Todd went on to use private funding and community investment to install living systems that improve environmental quality for municipalities, resorts, and private business.

The graphic below, from Dr. John Todd, illustrates how ecological aquaculture can be an integral part of a whole earth system.  You can view and learn more about this image and explore innovative systems, like the Four Seasons' fish pond in Hawaii, at the Ocean Arks International website.

Researchers who remained in academia and reliant upon federal funding had to abandon their innovative aquaculture work and move on to other things.  And now we see an interagency proposal for research and development coming out of the Joint Subcommittee on Aquaculture that gives no credit to this earlier research or current endeavors and proposes proceeding down a path emphasizing "innovation" that sees marine aquaculture as a source of massive food production. There is some recognition of the potential for aquaculture to improve environmental quality; but it is without recognition of the designs that have been worked out already. Do they plan to do the research all over again?

NAMA does not welcome or see benefit in the substitution of marine aquaculture for fisheries; and we find proposals for industrial scales of aquaculture that mimic industrial agriculture to be frustratingly unimaginative. But "research and development" is headed in that direction, with indications that innovation means doing the same thing, just a bit better, eg. finding alternative food sources that don't strip the ocean of wild forage, building stronger cages or floating cages in the currents, engineering sterile stocks, breeding or engineering meatier strains, etc.  But these are not innovations; they take us down the same path as the green revolution toward the same environmentally disastrous end.

I would suggest that innovative aquaculture in the food system should be a whole lot different than that.   Instead of growing the same seafood species we eat from the wild, aquaculture could be used to clean up and enrich the ecosystems that naturally support those wild populations of fish and shellfish.  Marine habitats, including fishery habitats, are contaminated with toxic and nutrient pollution and many coastal ecosystems suffer from severe habitat degradation due to coastal development and damage from industrial scale fishing.  Aquaculture of seaweeds and shellfish, if done in concert with the ecosystem, can improve those habitats and thereby nurture the recovery of wild fish populations. That certainly seems a more appropriate use of marine aquaculture than fish farms that contribute further to the degradation of marine ecosystems and wild fish populations.

Land-based, closed system aquaculture of marine fish is sometimes recommended as an alternative fish farming design by those concerned by the impacts of open water farming.  However, I would suggest that a better role for land-based marine aquaculture would be to concentrate on easily cultured micro-alge, plankton, and perhaps forage fish to produce the oils and fish-meals, the markets for which now cause the base of the ocean food chain to be plundered on huge scales by industrial fleets.  The omega-3s that we covet begin in the ocean in micro-algae and are passed on to small fish such as menhaden that feed on these algae and concentrate the precious oil and then in turn pass it onto the predatory fish on which we dine. Why not get our dietary supplements and feed additives for farmed animals from closed-system aquaculture instead of robbing the natural food webs of the sea.

And finally there may be an important role for aquaculture food production if it is kept at small scales, involves appropriate and diverse species, and is fully integrated with the rest of the food system.

Some elements of the interagency proposal for aquaculture research and development are seriously misguided and exhibit a lack of vision; e.g:

• "Globally competitive," should not be the primary driver for US aquaculture since it immediately sends us down the same biologically and socially disastrous road taken by other aquaculture-driven countries like Norway, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, and others. Competition is not an issue, if the US takes an entirely different approach (see below). Taking a different approach, of course, is likely to meet with resistance from those who think it's easier and more profitable to just do what others are doing only do it more successfully with short term economic rewards. That's competitive. That's not what we need.
• Aquaculture should not be viewed as a separate "sector" functioning in isolation; it should integrate with the food production system, or with ecosystem restoration, or with abatement of negative environmental impacts of other endeavors.
• Seafood aquaculture should not be a primary vehicle for economic growth or global trade; food is a necessity for life, not an optional commodity; and it should be produced and distributed in each nation or region for the affordable and healthful use of its people, not shipped out to the highest bidder.

Instead the Joint Subcommittee on Aquaculture might benefit from a look back at the old research and perhaps new research could expand on it. Consult with experts like John Todd and others who have managed to go on with their visions without the help of the federal government. Let's create a completely different plan for aquaculture development in the US that leads the world rather than following the rest of the world into ecologically damaging aquaculture models (e.g. those of Norway, Canada, Chile).

As you can see in our comments we recommend aquaculture policy and development that:

• Supports wild fisheries;
• Integrates aquaculture with agriculture;
• Integrates aquaculture into the food system - with a focus on local not global; and
• Integrates aquaculture into environmental services.

We propose a new vision for aquaculture in the US:

1. Aquaculture that is developed in concert with and is supportive of natural ecosystems, ecosystem and environmental services, wildlife habitat needs, wild fisheries, recreational values, and a diverse national food system in harmony with local food sovereignty.
2. Aquaculture that is:
• diverse in design and species grown;
• designed to restore healthy ecosystems and improve habitat for and production of fish populations;
• consistent with natural diversity and ecosystem carrying capacity;
• non-exploitive of natural resources;
• an enhancement to environmental and/or ecosystem services; and
• without negative environmental impacts.
3. Aquaculture for food production that has one or more of the following assets:
• small scale and non-disruptive of ecosystems;
• land-based and integrated with agriculture;
• part of an integrated food system;
• primarily supportive of local markets and local food sovereignty;
• contributing to affordable, safe, high-quality protein needs of our own communities and health care systems;
• cultivated species that naturally exist at lower trophic; or when appropriate, polyculture with multiple interacting trophic levels;
• guided by humane standards of husbandry, stock densities, health and handling of livestock, etc.
4. Aquaculture models that are environmentally and socially responsible, small scale, locally focused, and are transferable to other locations globally.
5. Distribution and marketing systems for seafood (both wild caught and cultured) that are locally focused, minimize waste, and feed a broad spectrum of people and base on fair pricing for both producers and consumers.

There may be other worthy and innovative visions, but more of the same is not one of them. Why can't we do this differently? Why must we have a blue revolution that mimics the green revolution with all its inherent problems? That is no kind of vision at all! It's walking backward into the future.