Mote Marine Continues Down Wrong Path
Michael P. Crosby is president and CEO of Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, a nonprofit marine research organization in Sarasota. Kevan Main is the director of the 200-acre Mote Aquaculture Research Park, past president of the World Aquaculture Society, and a 2016 White House Champion of Change for Sustainable Seafood.
They have written a self-promoting article* supporting their aquaculture endeavor with Ocean Era in the Gulf of Mexico, which will put our environment at risk.
Mote Marine Institute has a checkered past. They purport to be environmentalists interested in lessening Florida’s water woes but have accepted support from Mosaic in the past and have gone on record as minimizing human influences on red tide. Now, once again, we see Mote Marine Institute leading us in the wrong direction. Rather than showing an interest in protecting our waters, they seem more interested in Florida’s recent policy of money over environment.
Business at all costs.
They hope to “to minimize potentially negative impacts” but accidents and negative impacts happen where aquaculture is practiced.
David McGrath, a writer and college professor, writes in an article about a year ago:
A chain-link cage, anchored to the sea floor 130 feet below, with 20,000 almaco jack fish packed like cattle in an oversized bait ball of synthetic feed, waste, and pharmaceuticals, would alter the ecology and pollute and deform Florida’s natural, heretofore uncorrupted west coast….
The conservation group Friends of the Earth echoed the same dangers: “From the release of untreated fish waste and excess nutrients to the overuse of antibiotics and endangerment of marine life, industrial ocean fish farms are nothing but bad news for our oceans.”
Ocean Era itself acknowledged that in their existing farm off Hawaii, which they saturate with hydrogen peroxide, “leakage” is common and escape risk “high” for the penned fish invariably infected with “skin fluke parasites.” They also admit to hazards for large fish and mammals (dolphins and whales) attracted to the cages that can become trapped inside and die, as happened recently with an endangered tiger shark and a monk seal.
In the EPA’s “Response to comments” they say about 44,500 comments were received regarding Ocean Era’s permit application, but unfortunately and as expected, they did not say how many supported and how many opposed.
Want to see more problems associated with fish farming? Go to this link.
*Tampa Bay Times, Dec. 14, 2021, does not provide a link.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
