Aquaculture Policy Engagement
As a member of the Don't Cage Our Oceans coalition, this Spring we engaged representatives and constituents to highlight the critical differences between industrial aquaculture for finfish supported under the AQUAA and SEAFood Act, advocating instead for the support of the Domestic Seafood Production Act. DSPA was recently introduced by Representatives Mary Peltola of Alaska and Troy Carter of New Orleans, LA to support our country’s working waterfronts and small-scale fishing communities
Just as farming, ranching, and stewardship of land and rivers are integral to Colorado's cultural heritage, many coastal communities across the U.S. are deeply connected to fishing traditions and have long-standing caretaking relationships with the sea. The seafood we purchase is one way to support these fishing communities and our shared oceans. By advocating for the Domestic Seafood Production Act, we encourage legislators to protect sustainable, community-centered seafood practices that uphold these traditions and ensure the health of our marine ecosystems.
There are a multitude of threats to natural systems and coastal communities that factory style fish farm pose. The concentrated waste from large-scale fish farms can lead to water pollution, algal blooms, and the degradation of surrounding ecosystems, including vital habitats like coral reefs and seagrass beds resulting in environmental degradation. High-density fish farming increases the risk of disease and parasite outbreaks, which can spread to wild fish populations, threatening the health and sustainability of native species. Escapees from fish farms, particularly genetically modified or non-native species, can interbreed with wild fish, leading to genetic contamination and weakening the resilience of wild populations. The production of fish feed, often derived from wild-caught fish or soy, places additional pressure on marine and terrestrial ecosystems, disrupting food chains and contributing to overfishing and deforestation. Industrial fish farms can outcompete small-scale, traditional fisheries, undermining the livelihoods of coastal communities and eroding cultural heritage tied to sustainable fishing practices. To control disease in crowded conditions, factory farms often rely on antibiotics and chemicals, which can lead to antibiotic resistance and the contamination of surrounding waters, posing risks to human health and marine life. These threats highlight the need for careful regulation and the promotion of more sustainable, community-based approaches to seafood production.
WAVES OP-ED ON DSPA: It’s time for Coloradans to start thinking deeply about seafood sourcing
By Chelsea Brown and Mia Glover
Coloradans care where our food comes from. Many of us choose to support community-based businesses, growers, and food providers, boosting local economies and avoiding the negative impacts of the global food system, such as high carbon emissions and corporate consolidation. Likewise, Colorado’s politicians have helped protect the rights of our local farmers and ranchers, as vital producers that contribute to Colorado’s economy and feed our state.
Why should seafood be any different? Considering the health benefits of consuming seafood, and the fact that incorporating lean protein and omega threes is crucial for a well balanced diet, Coloradans are eating more seafood every year. Even though our state is landlocked, we can take measures to support family-scale and community-based operations in the U.S. that harvest seafood with values.
An important opportunity for doing so is the Domestic Seafood Production Act (DSPA), legislation recently introduced by Representatives Mary Peltola of Alaska and Troy Carter of New Orleans, LA to support our country’s working waterfronts and small-scale fishing communities. As co-founders of WAVES, an environmental organization dedicated to promoting food sovereignty, we laud Representatives Peltola and Carter, and urge our Colorado congressional representatives to support this Act.
Currently, most of the seafood we eat in the U.S. is imported. Some of that seafood is originally landed here, exported to be processed by low-wage laborers, and then re-imported. Nevertheless, somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of all seafood consumed in the U.S. originates from overseas.
Contrast that with a recent study in Nature Ocean Sustainability, which found that seafood self-reliance in the U.S. is actually within reach. One of the researchers’ conclusions was that achieving greater seafood independence in the U.S. requires investments in infrastructure.
DSPA does just that by funding processing infrastructure for U.S. wild-capture fisheries and mariculture, defined as cultivation of shellfish and aquatic plants. Processing — cleaning, fileting, and otherwise preparing seafood for consumption — is often a bottleneck that prevents seafood supply chains from staying localized and transparent. By expanding processing capacity, DSPA allows U.S. seafood producers to provide more nutritious, high-quality, and affordable seafood to domestic consumers.
The Act also protects our oceans by placing checks on the development of industrial finfish farming in U.S. federal waters. The ocean-based equivalent of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), factory fish farms come with a host of impacts, including disease outbreaks, mass escapes, and pollutant discharge into the open ocean. Because many farmed finfish are carnivorous, these operations can also exacerbate overfishing by extracting more wild fish to make fish feed than they actually produce in the form of farmed protein.
Intensive aquaculture also slots into the global industrial food system. Many of the same corporate giants responsible for consolidating land-based agriculture and food distribution — like Cargill, JBS Foods, and Sysco — are now pushing for the export of factory farming from land to sea.
Representing WAVES and the Inland Ocean Coalition, we recently advocated in Washington D.C. against industrial offshore finfish farms with the coalition Don’t Cage Our Oceans. The coalition, comprising family fishers and farmers, chefs, and environmental advocates, promotes values-based seafood systems over profit-hungry industrial aquaculture.
We were grateful to meet with Senator Michael Bennet, Congressman Joe Neguse, and their teams, who heard us out on the harms of factory fish farming and the need to support fishing communities that have long contributed to the economies and cultural fabric of our country.
We urge Senators Hickenlooper and Bennet, and Representative Neguse, to see the parallels between our mountain streams and the vast oceans, and to recognize how an unsustainable, greed-driven food system can ripple back to affect Colorado’s farms, rangelands, and water systems. We also encourage our fellow Colorado seafood lovers to contact your legislators, and to seek out values-based seafood providers through tools like the Local Catch Network’s seafood finder. Together, we can protect not only the wildlife and ecosystems we cherish, but also the integrity of our national food supply.
