Aquaculture fish food suppliers

Vital-Needs is positioned as one of the leading aquaculture fish food suppliers in Pakenham, Australia. Visit Vital-needs today!

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is the critical need to understand, trust, and follow science when making important public policy decisions. It is with this guiding principle that I offer facts and perspective in response to my colleague and friend Leonard Forsman’s recent column published in the Kitsap Sun regarding net-pen aquaculture in Puget Sound. With global nutrition, Tribal treaty rights, and local jobs at stake, we must be skeptical of alarmist rhetoric based on outdated assumptions, misconceptions, and mistruths.

There are many reasons the public and the Department of Natural (DNR) Resources should support a robust and well-regulated Aquaculture industry here in Washington and specifically in the Puget Sound area. Our wild stocks of trout and salmon are more imperiled than ever. The loss of wild salmon and steelhead runs threatens extinction of our Southern Resident Orca, our Tribal opportunity to harvest wild fish for sustenance and ceremony purposes as well as our region’s rich history of locally sourced salmon and trout as a family-food staple. Sustainable fish-farming allows us to continue harvesting locally grown seafood without further depleting our native stocks. I firmly believe aquaculture is part of the solution, not the problem.

The world’s population is experiencing an exploding demand for nutrient-rich sources of protein and aquaculture is the most carbon-friendly way of providing it. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that by the year 2030 the number of malnourished people will rise to 841 million and stated last month “Aquaculture is vital for feeding the world’s expanding population.” Most Americans don’t realize over 80% of our seafood products are imported into the United States and most of those countries do not meet our environmental standards.

Farmed seafood requires the lowest energy demand of any sourced protein, a fraction of what is required to farm chicken, pork, or beef and produces far less greenhouse gas emissions than land-based agriculture. It seems only natural that as a northwest region, the Salish Sea would embrace aquaculture as an industry that would complement our natural stock fisheries in which we can be global leaders in feeding a hungry planet, and sourcing locally grown seafood, in the most climate friendly way possible.