The Local Ocean fish farm in Hudson, N.Y., may be an aquaculture game-changer, raising saltwater fish, mostly sea bream (similar to porgy and orata), in tanks on land.
Raymond Mizrahi, the executive vice president and a partner in the company, said the system, which uses local drinking water treated with salt from the Red Sea, has 60 tanks, each with 3,800 gallons of water, in an old factory, and, in a greenhouse, 120 more tanks each with about 12,000 gallons of water. It is completely enclosed, so there is no runoff. All wastewater is filtered, and 70 percent of it is recirculated. The rest is treated for other uses.
Peter Bridson, the aquaculture research manager for Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, whose Seafood Watch rates the environmental impact involved in raising and gathering various species, said that, while he had not visited Local Ocean, it does not seem to cause pollution, as marine fish farms often do. Its farmed fish can’t escape into the wild. Still, as with other aquaculture operations, about 30 percent of Local Ocean’s feed is from ocean species like menhaden and anchovies, which critics of aquaculture say are threatened with overfishing for feed.
Read the complete story from The New York Times.
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