Net pen cages

In a discussion with Dr. Ron Hardy, director of UI’s Aquaculture Research Institute I made note of an experience I had 15 years ago when I was working for ESPN. I was up in the Puget Sound area and did a story on fish farming where salmon were contained within cages made out of nets, fed food pellets and the concept was to have them, obviously, reproduce. In later years I have read about concerns regarding pollution. "What you are referring to are net pen cages. They are a very highly developed industry in Norway, Scotland, Chile, substantial in Tasmania and New Zealand. This type of fish farming was pioneered in Washington State. But, there was a lot of competition for water, for shoreline, recreational uses and the industry moved to British Columbia and to places where there is not so much concerned about this. In the old days, when this first started, it was a beginner industry. We didn't know much about how to feed them and where to site these pens in order to avoid any local effects of the pens on the sea bottom or the organisms around them. Nowadays, there are very strict regulations on where these can be sited, they are out in deep water where the flows are such that these local effects don't occur. If you think about it it is in the interest of the farmers to make sure that the environment their fish are being raised in is optimized so the fish will grow and not be subject to disease and so, this has been a big focus and, it being a new industry, of course it did not start out doing everything the right way but it has really moved in the right direction. The other thing that has advanced is the quality of feed is such that there is much less pollution coming from waste products from the fish.