Univeristy of Michigan professor argues for strong growth of an aquaculture industry in Michigan and other US states, especially those with ample water resources. Dr. James S. Diana is Director of the Michigan Sea Grant College Program and Professor of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) at University of Michigan. He and his students, including Keith Hayse-Gregson, are studying ecology of fishes as well as aquaculture. They have developed interests in aquaculture’s potential contribution to the global food supply through the understanding of ecologically sensitive aquaculture practices, particularly in developing countries.
Dr. Diana and his graduate student, Mr. Hayse-Gregson, have written a very interesting article for “EarthSky”, an online blog site. They compare the start of an aquaculture industry in Thailand in the early 1990s with the aquaculture industry in the US and Michigan today. Their conclusion is that aquaculture in Michigan should have an important role in the future. Whether or not it does, depends to a large degree on how we understand and develop this system as a major commercial enterprise, rather than a small-scale, mom-and-pop operation.
To read the article, click here!
As long as we maintain a regulatory environment where every environmental activist or government bureaucrat has the power to say NO, we will not have internationally competitive aquaculture in the US. This social behavior is well described in the concept of the “Tragedy of the AntiCommons” , where every “stakeholder” has veto power resulting in a systems where nothing gets done that would benefit the society as a whole.
This is the US economic disease and why we will continue to have to import seafood instead of local production. We spend about 10.9 billion dollars per year on seafood imports, about half of which are aquaculture products.