It will become increasingly possible to farm fish on the high seas, something known as mariculture.
Before that happens, and before large investments are made and governments feel obliged to start defending national interests, mariculture needs common international standards.Up to now, the world has been dreadful at regulating fishing.
Aquaculture, also called fish farming, fish culture, or mariculture, an approximate equivalent in fishing to agriculture that is, the rearing of fish, shellfish, and some aquatic plants to supplement the natural supply.
My favorite gentility when I lived here was: "May I drive you to your car?" I once enjoyed a dinner with the state senator from Humboldt county, one of the country's leading mariculture (as in marijuana) regions.
The oyster farm was predictably described as "industrial" and "commercial," as if it were a giant factory, not a modest mariculture business.
"I don't think the mariculture operation is incompatible with an objective of having a healthy population of harbor seals in Drakes Estero," wrote Peter Boveng of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"Attention needs to be placed on whether current mariculture is providing an ecosystem service to the Drakes Estero ecosystem today," he wrote.
Despite the successes of several developed countries in managing their fisheries, sustainable global food provision is far below what could be delivered if wild stocks were more sustainably harvested and sustainable mariculture production was increased," say the authors.
"In 1990, shrimp farming was essentially zero in the United States," said Addison L. Lawrence, a shrimp mariculture expert at Texas A&M's Port Aransas campus, on Mustang Island to the east.
"It's a wonderful opportunity for the Gulf of Mexico, but it's been a long time coming," says Joe Hendrix, president of Seafish Mariculture in Houston, Texas, an aquaculture consulting group.
The plan was proposed by Mariculture Unlimited of Bridgeport, a shellfish farming company owned by Dr. John Garofalo of Westport who lives near the yacht club.
