Why hasn’t fish farming taken off in the U.S.?
It’s certainly not for lack of demand for the fish. Slowly but surely, seafood that’s grown in aquaculture is taking over the seafood section at your supermarket, and the vast majority is imported.
The shrimp and tilapia typically come from warm-water ponds in southeast Asia and Latin America. Farmed salmon come from big net pens in the coastal waters of Norway or Chile.
Michael Rubino, director of aquaculture at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says the U.S. could harvest much of that fish — especially the salmon — here at home. He points to a study carried out by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which concluded that, among all the world’s nations, the U.S. had the greatest potential for ocean-based aquaculture production.
Rubino says it wouldn’t even consume a very large area. “The entire Norwegian production of salmon, a million tons a year, can be grown in an area about the size of the runways at JFK Airport in New York,” he says…
Read the full article at The Salt at NPR Food | by Dan Charles
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