Saving Big Blue, Part Two

Op-EdThe U.S. has a negative seafood balance of $20 billion. There is a solution for that. But it makes too much sense.I received a press release last week from the fisheries director at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. Her release said there was “an exciting new development” in aquaculture, a topic I wrote about in this spot a couple years ago.The old column noted the lack of any significant investment in aquaculture in the U.S. combined with our nation’s huge appetite for seafood.I contrasted that domestic failure with the EU’s commitment of 4 billion euros to build “the blue economy” through aquaculture. “This sector can also help decarbonize the economy, fight climate change and mitigate its impact, and reduce pollution,” was how the EU report defended the investment.According to Eurostat’s most recent yearly numbers, that effort has yielded 1 million tons of seafood sold for roughly 4.6 billion euros.So I was myself a little bit excited by the NOAA fisheries director’s “exciting” development in aquaculture. Maybe our government had finally realized what an economic opportunity there was in the waters off 95,000 miles of shoreline and in 100,000 lakes.But I read on.The U.S. is dedicating a miserly $13.5 million over five years to a partnership with the University of New Hampshire to start — start — the process of finding aquaculture sites. By odd coincidence a very similar sum of $14 million was dedicated to aquaculture in the 2024 buget I wrote about.The pittance of investment cannot be tied to the director, Danielle Blacklock, who is not a political apparatchik but instead comes from an extensive marine science background.But it can be laid on the current administration which last week paid a German company focused on renewable energy $1.2 billion to give up leases for offshore wind farms.The German company involved, RWE, agreed, as a condition of the buyout, to spend some of the $1.2 billion on natural gas projects and gas-fired turbines — a 180-degree turn away from its commitment to renewable energy.On its website, the company says, “At RWE, we have a clear focus on renewables, and are a strong partner on the path to a green future.”So the U.S. is spending more than one thousand million dollars — it is easy to forget these days how big a billion is — to turn the company away from its corporate goal. As the earth warms.Keep in mind that the U.S. is a big importer of seafood, an industry with a negative balance of payments that totals roughly $20 billion. In other words, there is money to be made in aquaculture and it would keep jobs and money here at home.The overall contrast with the EU on this issue is indeed great. But the EU’s roughly 1 million tons of aquaculture products from all its nations is no match, not even close, to the single nation of Norway which sits just outside the union.“To put the EU’s aquaculture industry in some perspective, the value of aquaculture output in Norway exceeded that of the whole of the EU,” said a Eurostat report earlier this year. “Norway produced 1.6 million tonnes (1.76 million tons) of aquatic organisms (almost exclusively salmon), worth 9.5 billion euros.”But even Norway is not the top aquaculture dog. It ranks second. The number one spot goes to China. It is also the worldwide top generator of renewable electricity, four times larger than the U.S.While the U.S. is investing next to nothing in aquaculture and reversing course on renewable electricity, China has pushed forward on both. It may have peaked energy emissions this year and now produces about 55 million tons of seafood every year from aquaculture.It is true that the Chinese had a head start. They began growing carp in ponds more than five thousand years ago. In 475 BC, the Chinese general and politician Fan Li wrote the earliest known treatise on fish farming.He is said to have thereafter retired from his ministerial post and lived with one of the four renowned beauties of ancient China on a fishing boat roaming the misty wilderness of Lake Tai.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads