How Does A Fish Farm Work?
Image source: “Fish farm” by Artur Rydzewski is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Many people think that the fish they buy at the grocery store or are served at restaurants comes from manually catching fish with fishing rods and other tools. While this may be the case, about half of all the consumed fish on the planet come from fish farms or other forms of aquaculture. So how does this all work? Well, hundreds and even thousands fish are placed into large cages in ponds, lakes, or just offshore and fed by fishmeal or fish oil. This has some consequences on nature though because both of those products are produced by killing vast amounts of smaller fish. With closed bodies of water, the quality of the water is also brought into question and bad water quality makes the fish worse. For indoor farms, the water quality is constantly regulated and oxygen is delivered directly into the water. In order to maintain populations in farms, fish are allowed to reproduce although stress placed on the fish tends to cause issues in reproduction. Certain scientists have been studying what conditions fish need to create healthy offspring and different solutions are being tested and used all over the world. Finally, once a fish has reached market size they are killed, most of the time through asphyxiation (being removed from water), but some other more humane methods have been tried such as stunning and then gutting the fish while its unconscious. Fish farming is a massive feat of engineering, many things need to be kept in check such as water quality and deoxygenation, and unique machines help to provide solutions to these issues.
Related Stories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_farming
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/aquaculture/
