Green feed in the marine fish farming : how to communicate water benchmarks to stakeholders

Abstract: Global catch fishery is said to been oppressed to its limit (Boyd & Schmittou, 1999), further implying aquaculture might be the only solution to the world demand for fishery products. The applied term aquaculture in this paper refers to the one used by NOAA (2008); breeding, rearing, and harvesting of plants and animals in all kind of water environments, including but not limited to ponds, rivers, lakes, and the ocean. According to Shamshak & Anderson (2008, p. 74) aquaculture has over the past 20 years been the fastest growing food sector with an average annual growth rate of 8.7%. It further represents approximately 37 % (Shamshak & Anderson, 2008, p. 73) of total fisheries production worldwide. But even though aquaculture has taken off, the practice has its critics. The industry must counter criticism about the lack of sustainability. If the industry is able to successfully do this, the farming technique can more easily fulfill its potential role as a world food supplier (Boyd &, Schmittou, 1999). But first the aquaculture industry needs better environmental management for a continued growth.One practice that needs to be curtailed is the choice of using unsustainable (limited) and expensive fishmeal and fishoil. The challenge is to identify more environmentally friendly and cheap substitutes for the unsustainably fishmeal and fishoil. Several trials have been made to reduce the quota of unsustainable fishmeal in farming the deep blue, and where e.g. feed has been substituted to one extend by soybeanmeal. Nonetheless, it is crucial that the substitutes for fishmeal and fishoil maintain both the quality and quantity of production that the original products achieve. Also, further importance and essentials must be paid to make these practices transparent to the industry’s stakeholders.Pittenger et al., (2007, p. 98) has shown that advances in both feed formulation and feed management on a farm level have led to increased fish growth, reduced production costs, and reduced feed conversion ratios but where research is still in progress to continue developing alternative feed ingredients. Of importance is to note that even though progress has been made in identifying substitutes for fishmeal and fish oil, there is currently no commercially available product that can completely substitute for fishmeal and fishoil (Ibid).A fish farm needs to efficiently deal with the environmental issues it causes, or the effects will be deleterious. This thesis shows that less use of fishmeal (substituted by Soybean Protein Concentrate) can improve waterquality in some parameters used in this thesis. Further this thesis shows how sustainable benchmarks (with respect to watermetrics) efficiently can be managed and communicated to the industry’s stakeholders by business managers.A farm managed with environmental awareness and a willingness to share the experiences in the process of finding a more sustainable production method (also referred as the case farm in this thesis) is; Kona Blue Water Farm, HI, USA.