SeaWeb summit kicks off in New Orleans
Previously held in cities like Vancouver in British Columbia, the annual SeaWeb Seafood Summit is being held at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans this week. And as Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, of the New Orleans-based NOLA.com explains, the government official stressed the need for the USA to embrace aquaculture development:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Kathryn Sullivan kicked off the annual SeaWeb Seafood Summit in New Orleans on Monday (Feb. 9), highlighting the importance of improving seafood sustainability by focusing on "societal, economic and ecological resilience." Sullivan pointed to Louisiana's strong commercial fishing industry but also to how the Gulf of Mexico and the country as a whole must embrace aquaculture to meet future global seafood needs as human populations grow. The proposed federal Gulf Aquaculture Plan published last year would allow up to 20 offshore aquaculture operations to be permitted in federal waters in the Gulf over a 10-year period.
Several hundred people involved with the seafood industry are attending the three-day SeaWeb Seafood Summit at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans through Wednesday (Feb. 11). It brings together those in the industry, academics and conservation groups from across the globe to discuss issues surrounding sustainable seafood. SeaWeb is a nonprofit with the mission of "creating a culture of ocean conservation." Sullivan said that while federal catch limits are helping to "end overfishing and rebuild our nation's fish stocks" that "the simple fact is that the global abundance of human beings are rising but the global abundance of human fish stocks are not. Half of the seafood we eat comes from aquaculture" in the United States, she said, but by far the majority is imported from abroad, mainly from Asia fishery aquaculture markets.
And while she pointed to the recent presidential task force that she co-chaired to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and seafood fraud, she said aquaculture in the United States could help drive seafood supply but also help make local fisheries more economically stable and keep more fisheries jobs local. In terms of challenges, she noted there remains "regulatory uncertainty and other challengers" in terms of building national aquaculture. She said the effort in part rests with local people developing aquaculture technologies for the local industry instead of exporting them for industries abroad.
