San Diego getting a new fish farm?
The demand for seafood is increasing at a time when overfishing, pollution and other factors are reducing wild populations, an article by California-based KPBS reporter Ed Joyce states; One way to meet growing demand is fish farming. A San Diego group wants to build an aquaculture project five miles west of Mission Beach. The farm would be the first of its kind in federal waters.
The Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute wants to build a fish farm in the ocean off San Diego. "Yellowtail, halibut, white seabass, striped bass are the four species we're looking at," Kent says. Don Kent is the President of Hubbs. The institute developed and manages the white seabass hatchery in Carlsbad's Aqua Hedionda lagoon. Kent says the aquaculture project will demonstrate how raising fish can reduce imports and improve the local economy. "When we're spending $9 billion more a year for seafood than we're exporting that's telling us that you know, we're sending a lot of our money and a lot of our jobs somewhere else," Kent says. Kent says the facility would raise striped bass in up to 24 net pens secured to the ocean floor.
He says the farm would operate with more stringent environmental and health standards tha farms in other countries. The Hubbs-SeaWorld Institute has an international reputation for marine research. In response to concerns raised by critics of the project, Kent says Hubbs has operated a net pen facility at Santa Catalina Island for the past seven years without system failure or an escape, and that the fish farm would add fishing industry jobs.
Steve Foltz, Vice President of Chesapeake Fish Company, a seafood distributor on San Diego's bayfront said that "It's going to be a good thing, and it will take pressure off the wild simply because it's another species to offer to our chefs and retailers".
It will be several years before any of the farm-raised fish would hit the market. Hubbs-SeaWorld President Kent says the fish farm faces a long approval process before state and federal agencies. He says it will take another two years beyond that before the first crop of fish would be harvested.
