To help preserve our wild oceans, modern aquaculture will continue its transition away from using marine fishmeal and fish oil as feed ingredients.

Environmentalists have long championed safeguarding our natural marine living resources from the damages caused by our relentless efforts to feed our growing world population.  They do not ever want to see our oceans succumb to what our lands have become where wild animal and plant populations can no longer provide us with food and where we have become critically dependent upon a very limited variety of domesticated plants and animals for our survival.

Simply put, environmentalists want to preserve the diverse wild state of our oceans that truly represent Earth’s last remaining great natural ecosystems that can provide significant quantities of wild foods for our continued survival.

However, wild marine fisheries are maxed out and can only supply about 50% of our current seafood needs.  Aquaculture currently supplies the other 50% and will be responsible for satisfying all of our future needs as our population explodes to 10 billion people by the year 2050.

To meet the world’s future seafood demands, the aquaculture industry will need to assure that there is a constantly growing supply of environmentally sustainable feed ingredients to fuel its ever-expanding growth.  Over 70% of our farmed seafood is currently dependent upon artificial feed formulations.  Without the constantly increasing availability of aquacultural feeds, our global system of farming our most favorite seafoods such as salmon, shrimp, tilapia, and pangasius will collapse.

Aquaculture today still depends upon fishmeal and fish oil rendered from wild marine forage fisheries such as anchovies, menhaden, and Antarctic krill to help satisfy its need for suitable nutritional feeds.  Ever since aquaculture production exploded worldwide in the eighties, environmentalists have voiced their concerns about whether it makes sense to feed wild fish to farmed fish.  For many years the aquaculture feed industry has been confronting this concern by continually striving to reduce its use of wild sourced marine fishmeal and fish oil.

Here is a look at the progress made so far and to what the future may hold:

1. Starting in the early nineties and continuing to today, the aquaculture feed industry started reducing the amount of  fishmeal  and fish oil by substituting sources from livestock byproducts (e.g. Chicken bones, feathers, scraps), grains such as soybeans, and by recovering trimmings from seafood processing and even lately, adding omega 3 fatty acids from GMO yeasts!  Since the nineties, the use of marine derived fishmeal and fish oil has generally been reduced by 60-70%.

2. Looking forward, rapidly developing feed technologies harnessing the ability of microbes, algae, and even insects to provide high quality proteins and fatty acids will further help reduce the amount of wild fish ingredients used in aquacultural feed formulations.

Conclusions:  The initial concerns of environmentalists about feeding wild fish to farmed fish are steadily fading away as new feed technologies advance to assure aquaculture can continue its explosive growth fueled by environmentally sustainable feed sources.  Aquaculture is certainly doing its part in helping to preserve our wild oceans;  Earth’s last great natural ecosystems that still have the remarkable ability to provide us with bountiful wild foods.

Go Blue! For Our Environment – For Sustainability – For Our Health

Sincerely,

David Glaubke, Director of Sustainability Initiatives

Sea Port Products Corp.  

The Explosive Growth of Global Seafood Production Since 1950 and a Look to the Future

Since 1950, enabling technologies and cheap available energy sparked an unprecedented boom in the production of wild caught and farmed seafood.   This never before seen capability to extract and utilize the Earth’s marine and freshwater food resources has elevated seafood to a unique status.  It is now the leading animal food protein for driving improvements in global human health, economic growth, food security, and environmental stewardship. 

·       Since 1950 aquaculture production has increased a hundred fold

·       Since 1950 wild capture fisheries production has increased by over 4.5 times

·       Since 1950 world seafood production has outpaced world population growth

·       Since 1950 aquaculture has been the world’s fastest growing animal protein food production system

·       Since 1950 world per capita consumption of seafood has more than quadrupled

Sea Port believes that ongoing advances in technology and responsible fishery and aquaculture management practices will continue to drive seafood production increases well into our future just like we have experienced since 1950.

However, the ultimate determinants for enabling a sustainable seafood production future may boil down to how well we solve/mitigate the major manmade negative impacts of global warming, ocean acidification, marine dead zones/pollution,  and the loss of productive freshwater and marine coastal habitats. 

Going forward, Sea Port is confident that the world will boldly confront these major emerging critical determinants of sustainable seafood production.  Sustainable global seafood production has truly become the world’s “poster child” for advancing the environmental stewardship of our precious Blue Planet.  Sea Port looks forward to a very bright seafood production future that will continue to improve the state of wellbeing of our growing world population.  

Go Blue! For Our Environment – For Sustainability – For Our Health

Seven billion city dwellers implementing “Hyper-Recycling” by the year 2050 may actually improve the health of our world’s freshwater and marine ecosystems

As the World’s Population grows to 10 billion by 2050, 70% or more will be living in cities.  This unprecedented clustering of the majority of Earth’s population could serve as a platform for creating a world economy and culture based on “Hyper-Recycling” in which all the natural resources that are used to make appliances, food, clothing, transportation, housing,  and provide us with energy are recycled. 

This “Hyper-Recycling” era will become much more feasible in 2050 due to the world’s population being concentrated in cities where economies of scale can successfully achieve efficient recycling schemes for the vast majority of the required natural resource inputs.

If, by 2050, the world does indeed embrace the new paradigm of “Hyper-Recycling”, many improvements may be seen in the water quality of our freshwater and marine environments that are so critical for the sustainable future of our seafood industry.  Here is a list of improvements to water quality that we may see in 2050 due to cities implementing “Hyper-Recycling”.

·         Industrial and municipal sewer effluents will be greatly decreased or eliminated and kept out of freshwater and marine ecosystems

·         Plastics and other solid wastes will be kept from entering our waterways and marine environments

·         Pollution from energy use will be reduced due to using more recycled energy schemes

·         Agricultural runoffs that reach the oceans  will be reduced by large cities actively recapturing valuable nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers from the river systems they boarder

There is certainly room for optimism as we look forward to a brave new world with seven billion people concentrated in cities by the year 2050.  As these future city dwellers hopefully adopt this game-changing paradigm of “Hyper-Recycling”, we just may see a new era where the long list of human caused negative impacts to our precious freshwater and marine ecosystems cease to exist.

However, do not wait until 2050 for this to happen.  Start your own personalized version of “Hyper-Recycling” Today.

You can make a difference!

Sincerely, David Glaubke,

Director of Sustainability Initiatives