Under General Principles of Organic Aquaculture four point headings a,b,c,d,are made.

I am in total agreement with these points.

What I have not seen in practice thus far however is

1 The development of any valuable and sustainable aquatic ecosystem.

Why the word valuable is used I have no idea. The systems would definitely be valuable if they had been created. Maybe therefore valuable is used to suggest that these sustainable ecosystems have been created.In reality they have not. IFOAM makes similar recommendations.
When we start using words like sustainable, aquatic ecosystems and enhancement it all sounds very environmentally friendly, but none of these things exist in the artificial fish farming environment. Organic certification has not change aquaculture practices to any great degree otherwise the intensive aquaculture industry would be unable to achieve these new organic standards so easily. It does not want to do something that it has never done before. All of these organic aquaculture standards that now exist have been tailored to fit what the industry feels it can most easily achieve. The industry is hardly going to manipulate standards that would not suit its methods of production.

2 The Healthy use and proper care of water and water resources.

This too would be wonderful if it was actually to happen. The health of water suggests that it contains life, as it should, you cannot refear to heathy distilled water, but the proper care of our water resources seems to include requiring effluent discharge licenses to be able to farm fish organically. This alone means that such targets or aspirations cannot be met. This hardly seems to fit the bill for organic aquaculture or claimes about health and cleanliness. The industry argues that if water is to be used it must under go some deterioration because of use. It is why farther down the standards water is allowed to be contaminated by not more than 10% of its origional values. This sounds all very well untill you examine water quality used from say boreholes. This water is low in oxygen and having been used for fish farming can then be legally discharged back into the environment in a degraded state 10% worse than when it was abstracted. This may seem of little relevance to the uninitiated but this allows for very dirty and polluted water to be returned to the environment.
The standards do in many areas contradict themselves, and the very environmental values that are being claimed for these standards.
If you were to strip away this over burden of environment language used to enviromentally enhance these standards they would be little different form normal fish farming codes of practice that already exist.

3 The maintenance or enhancement of water quality.

This statement is meant to be one of the four most important principles of organic aquaculture.
In the first place water quality is never maintained in fish farming and in the second place water quality has never been enhanced. Nothing in these standards lays down practises for enhancing anything, the aquatic ecosystems for instance, or water quality. If the natural capital is to be maintained improved or enhanced some one should lay down the practise that enable organic fish farmers to achieve these objectives if they are to be a reality and part of organic standards and the systems that carry that label.

4 The safety, maintenance or enhancement of wild aquatic flora and fauna.

How you go about fitting aquatic plants and aquatic fauna and flora into a tank growing system baffles me completely. Aquatic fauna and flora is largely ignored by fish farmers who have no use for it at all. Algae is a problem for a start, and most fish farmers are not freshwater or marine biologists who are capable of recognising when a particular aquatic organism is in danger from there operations or not. It is extremely difficult to look after something that you know little about. There are 40,000 species of frshwater algae in the UK alone. Fish farming has so far do enormous amounts of environmental damage were ever it has been situated. This is well documented.

The four general principles of organic aquaculture sound all very well as part of a mission statement as long as no one challanges their actual existance.

The next heading below is Environmetal Objectives. It is just more environmetal eco-speak that in reality has never been achieved. It sounds as though these standards are about to diliver a habitat paradise for organic fish farming systems, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Since when has fish farming minimised the use of external resources. Every one on the planet knows that it requires 3 tons of sea fish to produce 1 ton of trout or salmon. How big can a resource deficit be an still claimed to support a sustianble industry that minimises the use of external resources?

The industry has been so bad at managing stress in fish farming over the last 40 years that it has spent millions of dollars trying very hard to change the genetic mak-up of the fish, as it has failed to combat the stress problems created by the fish we all know as salmon and trout.
The trout and salmon you may end up eating from fish farms will not be those that you would expect to find in your local streams or rivers.

If you wish to see real changes in organic aquaculture standards should be fish species specific and singularly certified as they are certainly not the same as each other even though they may be classified in the same family - Cyprinidae, Salmonidae. Crustacean and shellfish should be certified similarly as has been recommended. They must all have access to their natural food supply as at least a larger portion of their diet. Carnivorous fish like trout and salmon eat live food hence the classification. If this cannot be achieved organic aquaculture will continue to be an artificial labell representing an artificial system with an artificially priced product to match, great for the producers, no good for the consumers or the rest of the organic community.

Laurence,
I agree that aquaculture should not be a antifical system, in the article I published at: http://www.southtropical.com/html/Articles/1-2004.htm
I compare shrimp farming culture systems, indoor , outdoor, intensive , super intensive, or extensive.
Since I´m in Ecuador I will be glad if only extensive systema are allowed, but in the other hand some countries with different natural resources or weather will be excluded. Difficult call for the aquaculture group at IFOAM.
regards
e.bolona

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