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Easy now Holmes. You 're getting all red in the face again LOL.
Of course they should look at CC systems. The first airplanes never fllew too well, but eventually they got it worked out. New RAS systems are better than the old ones. I should know, cause I've been involved with the construction and commisioning of 4 in the last 10 years.
Lets see how the new ones being built make out. Then go from there.
Don't know if you can entirely eliminate the ocean pens from the equation, but with the use of CC farms in combination with finishing farms in the ocean, the time the salmon are at sea can be dramatically reduced from years to months. This way you can manage the usage periods around local needs such as out migration of wild smolt.
Salmon farming only exists because of the wild fish that are being harvested to feed them. Any collapses in the wild fish feed would end salmon farming on or off land. Is farming salmon at all a good idea? Paul Greenberg's book "Four fish" is a fantastic read for those interested in fish farming and wild fish issues.
Salmon farming only exists because of the wild fish that are being harvested to feed them. Any collapses in the wild fish feed would end salmon farming on or off land. Is farming salmon at all a good idea? Paul Greenberg's book "Four fish" is a fantastic read for those interested in fish farming and wild fish issues.
Salmon farming could soon be conducted using cultured algae to provide omega 3's ect. and all fishmeal could come from commercial discards and offal from processing wild fish.
Would it be OK then?
I see technology being utilised/created for the recovery and use of "waste" products from other fisheries, or new forms of feed production, happening long before the challenges of taking fish out the ocean are overcome.
That would be great to see but i agree that the current consumption to production rate is not as efficient as it will need to be in the future. Does anyone know the figure? Is it 3 lbs of wild fish utilized for 1 lb of farmed salmon?
The salmon farming industry argues that salmon is an incredibly efficient eater, with a feed conversion rate (FCR) of about 1.2 to 1 compared with 8 : 1 for land-based animals such as cattle. This, however, is a misleading argument: comparing apples and oranges.
The primary food producer in water is phytoplankton, which gets eaten by zooplankton (e.g. krill). Small, non-carnivorous fish (anchovy) eat the krill and then get eaten by larger predator fish such as salmon higher up on the food pyramid. To raise carnivorous species like salmon on farms, we have to catch a lot of forage fish and grind them into fishmeal and fish oil as feed. How much? According to most realistic estimates, it takes five pounds of wild-caught herring, sardines, anchovies, and other forage fish to produce a pound of farmed salmon.
How do we get to the FCR of 1.2 : 1, then? It’s just that those five pounds are processed into highly concentrated oily pellets of 1.2 pounds, which when fed to the salmon, gives a FCR of 1.2 : 1. If salmon had to feed on grass or phytoplankton, their FCR would not look nearly that good! The higher up on the trophic pyramid (moving from a herbivorous through an omnivorous to a purely carnivorous diet) we go, the lower the conversion ratio. That's because most of the conversion work has already been done by an organism on a more basic trophic level. One of the foods with the most concentrated food energy available would be fats, e.g. fish oil. This is contained in the processed food fed to farmed salmon, so no wonder the FCR promoted by industry is so good. The food the salmon eat is already very highly concentrated. But to compare apples and apples, we should have to calculate how much conversion was required on the lower levels. We know the FCR from krill to salmon will be greater than 5:1.
There is also the fundamental issue of whether or not farming carnivorous species such as salmon is actually sustainable. Unlike herbivorous species (like tilapia and carp. Conversion 1.8 :1) that require minimal inputs of fishmeal, salmon require the harvesting of forage fish and krill for fishmeal and oil in unsustainable amounts. Salmon farming also creates a large carbon footprint in the harvesting, transport and processing of forage fish.
Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) is the amount of body weight gained for every kilogram of feed consumed. Using current feeding practices, and depending on what ingredients are available, it takes between 1.1 and 1.2 kilograms of feed to grow one kilogram of farmed Atlantic salmon. Feed companies are always working to improve this ratio and have nearly reached a one-to-one ratio.
When it comes to converting feed into protein for human consumption, salmon are the most efficient out of all farmed animals:
Feed conversion ratios
Salmon
1.2 meaning it takes 120g of feed to produce 100g of salmon
Salmon feed only uses 1.265 kilograms of small wild fish to grow one kilogram of salmon.
Salmon feed contains fishmeal and fish oil, which comes from small wild fish caught in one of the world's most sustainable fisheries, as well as ingredients from plant-based sources.
Our feed is approximately 16 % fishmeal and 13 % fish oil.
Fishmeal and fish oil is made from processing small wild fish. Wild fish yields about 22.5 % fishmeal and about 5% oil, and both fishmeal and oil are produced from the same fish.
The percentage of fishmeal and oil used in the diet (16% + 13% = 29%), divided by the total yield of fishmeal and oil from wild fish (22.5% + 5% = 27.5%), multiplied by our feed conversion ratio (FCR, 1.2), gives the actual amount of wild fish used to grow one kilogram of salmon, which is 1.265 kilograms.
http://www.mainstreamcanada.ca/salm...eed-conversion-ratio-fcr-all-farmed-livestock
http://www.salmonfarmers.org/sites/default/files/ewos_marine_ingredients.pdf
Kid:
Please read the prior posts and then revisit your (Mainstream's) numbers. It's apples and oranges.
That would be an entirely different question and debate - but still does not negate the fact that 3.5lbs of forage fishes are wasted in the production of 1lb of farmed salmon.Ok, if the argument here is going to be an apple is actually and orange, and vice versa - then why don't we look at it this way:
Salmon farming is actually a minor component of wild sourced fish oil and meal use.
The product it results in is (IMHO) a high value and highly nutritious one, and the conversion of feed to fish is very good.
Fish meal and oil for "aquaculture" may be large, but salmon farming is just a small component of aquaculture globally.
Therefore, my argument would be - If it were solely the use of wild feed for salmon farming that was the issue, wouldn't the other uses be more important to tackle due to their poor efficiency (pigs, chickens, ect.), or the fact that they weren't even for humans (pets)?
http://www.enaca.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1784
Ok, if the argument here is going to be an apple is actually and orange, and vice versa - then why don't we look at it this way:
Salmon farming is actually a minor component of wild sourced fish oil and meal use.
The product it results in is (IMHO) a high value and highly nutritious one, and the conversion of feed to fish is very good.
Fish meal and oil for "aquaculture" may be large, but salmon farming is just a small component of aquaculture globally.
Therefore, my argument would be - If it were solely the use of wild feed for salmon farming that was the issue, wouldn't the other uses be more important to tackle due to their poor efficiency (pigs, chickens, ect.), or the fact that they weren't even for humans (pets)?
http://www.enaca.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1784
Talk about "preconceived notions"...ClayoquotKid you appear to be incapable of understanding (or rather admittng) that there is a net loss of fish protein when you rear caniverous fish - something like 3.5lbs per 1lb of reared Atlantic salmon.Rockfish, I'm going to move the conversation to another point of interest because obviously there is no sense in trying to explain how the calculations actually work when people already have an idea in their head which says otherwise.
The idea that 3.5lbs of wild fish is "wasted" in the production of 1 lb of farmed salmon (agentaqua) is exactly one of those preconceived ideas.
The fact that cats in Australia eat more fish than people do, or that chickens and pigs are fed fish and use it at 2 to 4 times less efficiently than salmon do has no bearing on their stance.
Salmon farming is - in their mind - a bad thing, and no matter how it actually fits in to the global context of protein production they will villify it in whatever way they can.
I think rather than dragging the forum down into name calling and low level jabs, it would be more productive to talk about how these issues actually might be resolved.
I'm a fisherman, have been my whole life - it's Saturday, and I'm doing this because I don't think that pigheaded bullying should be the norm when it comes to discussing how all these elements can be managed into the future.
If I change the subject, or move the conversation in another direction it is simply because some points can be argued endlessly, and if they can't be agreed upon there is no point in continuing.