Fish Farms: Underwater Factories

Raising Farmed Fish

When they are only 4 to 7 inches long, young fish (called “fingerlings”) are transported from the hatchery where they were born to the fish farm. This is the first of many moves that they will make before their final trip to the slaughterhouse.

Fecal Stew (And That’s Not the Worst of It)
Contaminants from ocean-based aquafarms (fish excrement, uneaten chemical-laden food, and swarms of parasites) spread to the surrounding ocean, and the rampant disease inside the cages is passed on to ocean fish in the area, in some cases increasing the incidence of sea lice 1,000-fold.

	“Grading” fish by size is a stressful and sometimes-deadly process. Each fish is graded as many as five times during his or her life, sucked up or netted and then spit back out into a different cage.
	Unassuming on the surface, each of these aquafarm cages is stuffed with as many as 50,000 individuals who will never be able to swim without constantly bumping into other fish and the sides of the cage.

Sea lice are a regular occurrence on salmon farms. These parasites eat at the fish, causing their scales to fall off and creating large sores. In severely crowded conditions, lice often eat down to the bone on fish’s faces. This is so common that fish farmers have taken to calling it the “death crown.”

Injuries and Death From Fighting and Rough Treatment
In intensely crowded fish farms, small fish are bullied and killed by larger fish, so fish are continually sorted to make sure that faster-growing individuals are moved to the appropriate size grouping. At each sorting, they are netted or pumped out of their tanks and dumped onto a series of bars and grates with varying space gaps to divide them by size and redistribute them into different netted cages or tanks; small fish slip through the small grates, while larger fish fall through the larger gaps. This practice, called “grading,” is very stressful and results in painful scrapes and loss of scales.

High-tech, high-volume systems control food, light (on indoor farms), and growth stimulation. Drugs, hormones, and genetic engineering are used to accelerate growth and change reproductive behaviors. High mortality rates, disease, and parasite infestations are common. Deformities and stress-related injuries are also a regular occurrence; on some farms, as many as 40 percent of the fish are blind—which is not addressed because it is not a problem for fish farmers.

Crowding
Since they are designed to navigate vast oceans and use all their senses to do so, many fish go insane from the cramped conditions and lack of space in fish farms. The tight enclosures inhibit their ability to navigate properly and cause them to knock against each other and the sides of the enclosure—this jostling causes sores and damage to their fins, as well.

Stocking densities (the number of fish per cubic foot of water) are not a function of fish welfare and are raised until the death losses outweigh the benefits of cramming more fish into a smaller space. Salmon farms are so overcrowded—with as many as 50,000 individuals in each enclosure—that a 2.5 foot fish spends his or her entire life in a space the size of a bathtub; trout farms are even more crowded, with as many as 27 full-grown fish in a bathtub-sized space.


	Sea lice are a regular occurrence on salmon farms. These parasites eat at the fish and cause their scales to fall off, creating large sores. In severely crowded conditions, lice often eat down to the bone on fish’s faces. This is so common that fish farmers have taken to calling it the “death crown.”

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