Agriculture, Food, and Food Security - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 133

of experts such as the Food and Agriculture Organization,
the Asian Development Bank , and Worldwatch, fish farm-
ing can be a critical way to improve the global diet.
China offers an example of the global boom in aqua-
culture. After the Communists took over the country in
1949, they pushed the idea of food self-sufficiency . Using
mass mobilization of labor, more than 80,000 artificial
water bodies were constructed for hydropower, flood
control, and irrigation. Nearly 5 million acres (2 million
hectares) of inland water areas led to a 50 percent ex-
panse of aquaculture.
T Today, , China produces 70 percent of global, farmed
seafood. More than three-quarters of China' is seafood is
derived from fish farming. China is the world' is largest
consumer of fish feed and the largest importer of fish-
meal and fish oil. It is also the largest producer of preda-
tory seafood such as black carp, eels, and marine
shrimp—30 percent of the global product.

T Today, , coastal fishing communities are largely
the same as they were in the past and include men,
women, and children harvesting reef products as a
source of food and income. However, close to mar-
ket outlets and urban centers, customary tenure of
marine resources is being increasingly ignored in
the face of commercial pressures and opportunities.
Large-scale, commercial reef mariculture is in-
vading the Indo-Pacific region. Greater numbers of
“outsiders”—people with no connection to tradi-
tional understandings of the resources in question—
are increasingly involved in harvesting them. In
many cases, this leads to conflicts with the tradi-
tional resource users. As indigenous groups have no
written, legal rights to their land and water areas, it
is relatively simple for “aquabusiness” to move in.

AQUACUL TURE CRISES LOOM
As large-scale commercialization takes hold, traditional
methods are displaced. Synthetic nets deprive women of
their traditional role of net-making. Human-powered ca-
noes and boats are replaced with mechanized fishing ves-
sels, trawls, and dredges. Plant-based poisons, which
didn't overfish an area, are giving way to more powerful
chemical poisons and explosives. Aquabusinesses now
are “reducing fish” to feed fish. This term refers to the
practice of feeding whole or crushed up small species
such as herring or anchovies to larger, predatory fish
such as tuna and striped bass. (“Fish reduction” is also
employed in salmon production in the Atlantic Ocean.)
As we have seen above, industrial aquaculture has so-
cial fallout. However, it also has environmental conse-
quences. As increasing numbers of fish are bred within
enclosures, ever greater amounts of manure pollute sur-
rounding waters and harm other fish in the area. T To en-
sure large harvests, fingerlings (baby fish) are infused
with antibiotics and de-licing chemicals. Moreover, they
are bred to be genetically uniform so that their parts, such
as fillets, are all the same size for marketing. However, as
we saw with BT crops, protecting fish from one or two
diseases often results in their being prone to new diseases.
For example, in 2008, Chinese shrimp farmers lost more
than US$600 million to an unforseen disease. Further-
more, diseased fish that escape from human-made enclo-
sures can devastate free-swimming ocean stocks.
Problems aside, fish farming remains an important
source of food and livelihood for many coastal and other
communities in Asia and around the world. A program to

Reef Fisheries

Indo-Pacific coral reef fisheries harvest a wide range
of seafood such as bottom-dwelling fish like snap-
pers and groupers, small midwater fish such as
anchovies and sardines, and large, midwater and
oceanic fish such as tuna and barracudas. T Tropical
lobsters, crabs, octopus, sea cucumbers, and turtles
are also taken. Reef sharks, harvested for their fins
that are dried and sold on the East Asian market,
are increasingly popular.
Many of these and other species are not associ-
ated with coral reefs for their entire life cycle. How-
ever, many deposit their larvae there and are
vulnerable for capture during that time. Marine tur-
tles, sharks, and tuna often spend time around the
reefs in between their extensive migrations into
deeper parts of the ocean.
T Traditionally, , coral reefs were fished by nearby
coastal communities who often “owned” them under
customary laws and practices. For instance, “owner-
ship” might have meant “right to use.” T Typically, ,
there were strict controls on who could use a partic-
ular area. Women were prohibited from using nets or
boats. However, they often made the nets that were
employed along with traps, fish fences, and enclo-
sures. Some groups used spears and arrows in addi-
tion to traditional poisons.