The Fish Factory of the Future Will Be On Land

In the near future, we're going to have one hell of a fish problem. Overfishing has left stocks around the world severely depleted, and some argue we're already experiencing "peak fish." But we still can't get enough of the stuff. Billions of people depend on fish for daily sustenance, and the global fishing industry is worth an estimated $63 billion.

So more folks have been turning to aquaculture, or farm-raised fish. Proponents say it's a sustainable way to protect fish populations and meet market demand, foes argue that it wreaks all kinds of havoc on the environments where the farms are set up (usually in open nets off an ocean coastline). Pesticides leech into the environment, sea lice are bred, and all kinds of other nasty byproducts are reared.

So a Scottish salmon farming company is proposing a solution: farm the saltwater fish on land, in a giant warehouse, and run the operation with solar power.

First, another word about why it's important to get the salmon farms out of the water. Aquaculture is currently a $10 billion industry, and there's ample evidence that those farms are doing some serious damage. Farmed and Dangerous, a sort of fish farming watchdog group, exhaustively details the myriad woes of aquaculture (FAD has links with more detailed info on each at its website):

The Environmental Impacts of Salmon Farming

• Sea Lice
• Chemical Treatments: SLICE
• Disease
• Algae Blooms
• Marine Mammal Deaths
• Marine Debris
• Waste on the Ocean
• Floor Escapes & Alien Species
• Fish Feed

The Human Health Impacts of Salmon Farming

• PCBs & Contaminants
• Excessive Antibiotic Use & Resistance 
• Chemical Dependence

You get the picture. Fish farming corrupts natural marine habitat much the same way traditional farming can corrupt on land ecosystems.

But it's still a really good idea to start cutting back on our rapacious fishing habits, which conservation biologists say are endangering many ecologically important species of fish. So if we could do aquaculture without the adverse environmental and health impacts–say, by containing the operation on land–and do so using energy and feed efficiently, it would be a hell of a boon.

Enter Fishfrom, the Scottish company setting out to build a self-contained salmon factory.

The Guardian reports:

It is planning to build a vast new warehouse on the west coast of Scotland where it hopes to farm salmon on dry land, cultivating thousands of tonnes of fresh salmon untainted by chemicals, sea lice and seal-control, in a self-contained facility run on renewable electricity.

That factory, at Tayinloan, just opposite the Hebridean island of Gigha, will be powered largely by solar panels and a small hydro scheme nearby, feed its salmon on its own supply of a specially farmed marine animal called ragworm, and will recycle nearly all the water it needs onsite.

The closed loop fish farm will produce 800,000 salmon a year. But it will be costly to run, and conservationists wonder if it will prove a viable model. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating effort, and eyes will be on Scots in Fishfrom to see if they've stumbled upon the future of fish production.