Aquaculture 101

Often called seafood farming or fish farming, aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector, supplying nearly 50% of the world’s seafood. But today’s hyper-industrialized aquaculture allows global corporations to profit from marine resources while offloading the environmental and economic burdens onto coastal communities. NAMA is part of a growing network resisting big business domination in aquaculture while uplifting community-led, values-based methods — including appropriately-scaled bivalve and kelp farms.

The Problem

Coastal communities around the world have farmed seafood sustainably for millennia. But over the past few decades, Big Aquaculture corporations have been using political clout to secure their iron grip on the market and operate with little oversight. Industrial seafood farming follows the dirty formula of high extraction, high pollution, high profits, and rock-bottom quality. This is aquaculture at its worst. It upsets ecosystems, displaces communities, and undermines local economies in these ways:

Industrial offshore finfish farms are crowded and filthy. They generate waste that pollutes water, and exposes fish to parasites, diseases, antibiotics, and pesticides.
Concentrations of nutrient waste, such as nitrogen, can cause growth problems in marine life and lead to low-oxygen zone that kill wild fish.
Escaped farmed fish can spread disease to, intermix with, and change the behavior and genetics of native wild fish.
Surrounding predators, native fish, and sea birds can get entangled in pen nets and lines and die.
Equipment failures can lead to worker deaths and fires and can jeopardize marine ecosystems.
Aquaculture feed, such as GMO soybeans, has become highly profitable for food corporations, so they have a vested interest in pushing the MARA Act.
Industrial aquaculture facilities can destroy coastal habitats. More than 50% of deforested mangroves have been turned into shrimp ponds.
Biotech firms, such as AquaBounty, are genetically engineering fish species like salmon, which is a danger to Wild Salmon and the Indigenous communities that depend on them.
Globally, large aquaculture firms are bleeding former fishing communities dry. Many of them are now exploited laborers at giant facilities in their own backyards.

Industrial offshore finfish farming repeats the mistakes of Big Agriculture, jeopardizing local economies, worker safety, animal welfare, and marine ecosystems. It is part of the larger problem of “ocean grabbing,” or the move by corporations to turn public ocean resources into private profits. Yet, proponents spin it as the “Blue Economy,” targeting the ocean as the next frontier in economic growth.

The Solution

Aquaculture by definition is not itself problematic. It has enormous potential to benefit local economies while also supporting wild fisheries, and sustainable methods exist, such as appropriately-scaled, community-led bivalve and kelp farms. So what might aquaculture look like if we built it from the bottom up rather than the top down?

Visioning: Through in-depth visioning, boots-on-the-ground activism, and legislative campaigns, NAMA has been helping chart the path forward. We worked with multiple network members on the Aquaculture Values visioning project. Through this collaboration, we found that aquaculture must center eight values:

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Check out the full Aquaculture Values Report or the Summary!

Community-Led Aquaculture in Practice:

NAMA is part of a core team developing the Aquaculture Atlas, a collaborative digital platform that will connect aqua-farmers, researchers, policymakers, chefs, and communities working to advance values-based aquaculture that supports local livelihoods, healthy ecosystems, and thriving seafood economies.

Across the U.S., a growing number of shellfish and kelp farms already reflect these values, such as Swinomish Shellfish Company in Washington, Water is Life Oysters in Florida, Native Conservancy’s kelp farms in Alaska, Shinnecock Kelp Farmers in New York, and Indigo Oyster Farm in Maine.

Community Organizing:

NAMA actively supports Indigenous-led solutions through Block Corporate Salmon. Led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color from all across the country, this community-driven campaign is dedicated to stopping the release of genetically engineered (GE) salmon into the U.S. and world markets. The campaign's priorities are aligned with Native leadership working towards Wild Salmon habitat restoration and collaborates with Salmon People, Tribal fishers, and several nonprofit organizations.

Legislation:

NAMA’s Don’t Cage Our Oceans (DCO2) campaign is a broad coalition working to stop the development of offshore finfish farming in the U.S. while uplifting values-based seafood systems led by local communities. This means fighting harmful legislation like the MARA Act while supporting bills such as the Keep Finfish Free Act (KFFA) along with the Domestic Seafood Production Act (DSPA), which would strengthen local seafood processing and distribution infrastructure, support working waterfronts, and block finfish farming in federal waters.