Just leaving the beautiful island of Poros where I spent the past days meeting awesome people from foundations, activist movements and academics from four continents gathered together at the first ever #SeasofChange Summit on industrial fish farming, hosted by Rauch Foundation, Global Salmon Farming Resistance and local NGO Katheti
The facts are appalling
❌Fish farms are starving communities of locally caught fish, driving global food insecurity, triggering irreversible marine damage and harming human health, due to the toxicity of the farmed fish
❌EU funds have been given without any conditionality attached, so countries like Greece that don’t have the capacity to define fish farm policy, are rushing to spend the money, without understanding the ireversible consequences locally and globally
❌Wild fish caught off West Africa are shipped up to Europe and made into fish feed, depriving populations of their basic diet. Krill from Antarctica is also now made into fish feed. The booming industry of fish farms in Europe, subsidised by the EU, has a voracious appetite, contributing to overfishing, bottom trawler dead zones and diminishing of fish stocks around the world.
#CrazyStat1 It takes up to 4 kilos of wild fish to fatten up 1 kg of farmed fish
The rest of the diet is comprised of antibiotics and formaldehyde, plus the dead or diseased fish they eat. In Spain, Calpe fish farms in Spain used 342kilos of antibiotics to manage three outbreaks of Pasteurella, and the Basademar fish pens 20,000 used litres of formaldehyde( last year )
#CrazyStat2 up to 30% regularly die from disease and enormous cages of fish die from disease outbreaks when the oceans warm unexpectedly. Escapee fish eat local fish stocks, with irreversible consequences as whole local species ( eg of wild sea bream ) are becoming silently eradicated
#CrazyStat3 Underneath each fish cage is 2metres of fish faeces, creating a dead zone on the sea bed. Waste floats onto nearby Posidonia sea meadows. Underwater forests like Posidonia have a 4x times higher capacity for carbon capture than land based forests so contribute massively to Greece’s net zero climate plan.
Plus the plastic waste. Fish farms are already the highest contributor to plastic pollution in Greece’s seas, with styrofoam blocks on beaches and rocks surrounding existing fish farms.
Learning so much about this crazy new element in the global food system is mind-boggling, and gathering with so many bright and motivated people from around the world is a really inspiring way to work to achieve change.
Brilliant to discuss with organisations present inc. Greenpeace Greece , ClientEarth, Sea Shepherd Global , Don't Cage Our Oceans , Blue Marine Foundation , Grace Foundation
, Feedback , DeSmog and hosts, the Rauch Foundation and Katheti
Patti Eva Hannah Mike Francesco Nikos Fay
#SavePoros
#SeasofChange
#aquaculture
