Tag Archives: Don’t Cage Our Oceans

NOAA Is Rolling Out a Plan to Radically Expand Offshore Aquaculture. Not Everyone Is Onboard

The cardboard gravestones read “RIP Local fisherman,” “RIP Wild Fish,” and “RIP Humpback Whales.” Assembled in response to new aquaculture sites planned off the coast of California, the gravestones were brought to the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Long Beach, California, in April by activists keen to register their discontent. The sites pave the way for possibly dozens of new open-pen fish farms as far as three miles offshore, the future home of species that range from carp to salmon. Chief among the protesters’ concerns were entanglement of marine mammals, the expansion of dead zones caused by fish excrement, and infringement on wild fishing grounds. >click to read< 09:07

Don’t Cage Our Oceans: Fish farming may threaten rare Gulf whale

The site approved for the Velella Epsilon fish farm in federal waters west of Venice is one of just three potential aquaculture opportunity areas under consideration off Florida’s Gulf coast. There are six others — three in the central Gulf south of Louisiana and Mississippi and three east of Texas — as well as 10 in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. It’s part of a collusive effort between fish farming companies and the federal government to divide up national waters for profit, James Mitchell, legislative director of Don’t Cage Our Oceans, said. >click to read< 13:49