The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council will hold a public hearing Wednesday during its meeting in Mobile before voting on the issue. The Council is working on a plan that would create a permitting process for aquaculturists to develop large-scale fish farms, raising only native species in underwater cages.
According to the officials it would likely require as much as $10 million to launch an aquaculture operation in the Gulf, where oil platforms from Alabama to Texas could be used as infrastructure. It is informed that the species such as snappers, groupers, cobia or red drum could be raised in the facilities. Shrimp are excluded from the plan. Proponents told that raising fish in the Gulf could take pressure off overfished wild stocks, enhance recreational fishing opportunities and create new jobs in the seafood industry in the United States, where about 80 percent of consumed seafood is imported — about half of which is raised in aquaculture settings.
There is no doubt that the advent of aquaculture is actually providing jobs to fishermen who are being pushed out of the wild fishery because of regulations to rebuild stocks,” said Thomas McIlwain, a Mississippi representative on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and chair of the Gulf Coast Research Lab in Ocean Springs.
The Council said that the plan, among many other rules, requires that cages be stocked with juvenile fish that are proven to be free of pathogens to prevent disease. Only native species that haven’t been genetically modified would be allowed. Bob Shipp, an Alabama representative on the council and head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, informed that there have to be really stringent safeguards. He said that the plan has a variety of rules addressing potential problems.
