Will the new aquatic food save marine life from extinction?

If you’re a social media animal, you couldn’t have missed the Great Barrier Reef obituary, which went viral in October 2016. Scientists have since confirmed that much of it is dead due to two coral bleaching events. consecutive worldwide. events.

The most striking thing about the extinction event is that it is not caused by any direct human intervention. Instead, one can think of the reef as a sensor for the health of Earth’s oceans. The reef is dying not because someone is killing it, but because the oceans have a chronic and perhaps terminal disease.

What’s wrong with our oceans? Many things, including the almost intractable problem of global warming, but one practice stands out: the practice of destructive ocean fishing.

Since our inception, we have caught fish and aquatic life mostly from the wild. But with the population explosion and increasing demand, the ocean and rivers can no longer satisfy our hunger. Since the mid-1980s, the share of wild-caught in the world’s fish supply has been steadily declining, complemented by exponential growth in aquaculture. Ironically, this growth in aquaculture has been catastrophic for marine life.

There’s a name for this mess: omega-3 fatty acids. We all know how beneficial this fatty acid is for the human body and that we get most of our omega-3 fatty acids from fish. But what we don’t know is that fish doesn’t actually produce omega-3 fatty acids. Instead, they collect it by consuming the microalgae that produce it, or by preying on fish that feed on microalgae. This, for a long time, posed a challenge for farmers: farmed fish always had less nutrients than wild ones. To counteract this ‘malnutrition’, aquafeed companies began to use fish oil and fishmeal as main ingredients in aquafeeds. Where do this oil and fishmeal come from? Foraged the sea, of course. Although we don’t eat as much ocean fish anymore, farmed fish have consumed it more than ever.

How bad has that been? A report from a market research company states: “The current reliance on fishmeal and fish oil as primary ingredients in aquafeeds is costly and environmentally unsustainable.” Marine life is not only rapidly depleting, but capturing and processing it has become just as expensive.

And here’s the good news: The aquafeed industry is committed to getting out of this mess and is lobbying for endorsements from governments around the world for its innovative solutions. In recent years, the industry has become convinced that it must design sustainable alternatives to the use of fish oil and fishmeal.

There are two difficulties you face in doing so. First, find alternatives to fishmeal and fish oil that may have the necessary amount of omega-3s. However, the second question is more complicated: how to make the fish digest that source of omega-3? Much of aquaculture focuses on carnivorous fish, for example salmon. Your intestines are not designed to digest plant-based foods, such as seaweed, which otherwise contain a large amount of omega-3s.

Solutions come in two forms. The first is the ‘functional feed’ concept, which operates on the two-fold basic principle of developing aquafeeds that use agricultural by-products while improving the overall health of the fish. The challenge is to make them self-sufficient in a way that does not require the addition of fish products. The aquafeed industry has recently introduced a feed additive, sodium butyrate, which may prove to be that miracle catalyst for achieving this.

The second solution comes from an unexpected but abundant source: insects. While insects are already used to make protein supplements, the abundant fat extracted from these sources was going to waste. Until researchers like Daylan Tzompa Sosa from Wageningen University found that they are rich in omega-3. In December 2016, the EU member states approved a proposal from the European Commission for the use of insects as fish feed. This is a serious development, because the abundance and cheap nature of the insects make them a viable commercial alternative source for aquatic food.

Finally, there is a chance that marine life will no longer be ‘drilled’ for aquaculture. We have companies like BioMar, which recently released an ambitious report on sustainability, to thank for driving the research, as well as government approval for these alternatives. Their far-sightedness can have serious benefits for the land.

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