A Billion Dollar Industry...Stifled

While browsing the web for interesting articles, I came across an editorial in an online magazine discussing the hindrances of regulations on aquaculture facilities in New Zealand. The article can be found at: 

  http://www.nzaquaculture.co.nz/AC%201%20current.pdf

 What particularly fascinated me was the controversy that arises from removing fry from breeding grounds to be raised in aquaculture facilities.  The editor criticized the illegality of harvesting juveniles. Harvesting young fish, he believes, would not harm populations, (specifically whitebait, glass eels and mullet found in New Zealand) as the survival rates for juveniles are incredibly low. Additionally collecting and raising young fish is a safer endeavor than harvesting larger pre-spawning adults.

            The latter of that argument is clear- if pre-spawning adults are kept in the environment and young ones are taken to be raised, then stocks are more likely to grow because the chances of survival for pre-spawning adults, that will eventually spawn, are greater. The established dogma, as the editor put it, “that catching undersized fish is bad, while people who catch big fish are seen as heroes,” has essentially become a death sentence for the whitebait, glass eels and mullet populations because the “big fish” that are favored tend to be pre-spawning adults.

            Unfortunately legality issues prevent collecting young fish and the potential benefits that doing so would hold.  Licensed individuals in New Zealand, for instance, cannot legally raise glass eels unless they are purchased or grown from a starting weight between 220 grams and 4 kilos. Additionally, the fish produced can be sold only to licensed receivers at preset costs. Not only do these regulations severely hinder the opportunities for aquaculture to raise highly demanded fish for human consumption but they also harm wild populations, thus adding to our global crisis of overfishing.