TED Talk How I Fell In Love With A Fish

In 2012, approximately 180 million tonnes of live fish were eaten, and since then the amount has only been increasing. With such a high demand for these aquatic dwellers, companies have taken advantage of the market. Unfortunately, it seems that quantity has been put over quality. In Dan Barber's TED talk, How I Fell in Love with a Fish, he dishes out what goes on at a typical fish farming business and how even the best fish farms are flawed. The issues brought up are directly related to sustainability, the connection people have with nature, and science and values. It is necessary that people are aware of these issues as fish are a vital part of diets across the world. With 7.4 billion people on earth, it's vital that

People pollute the once clean waters with trash, chemicals, and so much more. In his TED talk, Dan Barber briefly spoke about how fish farms are polluting the ocean. Businesses add an array of chemicals (e.g. hydrogen peroxide, teflubenzuron, canthaxanthin, etc.) to fish in order to make natural fish pigment more vibrant, fight disease/bacteria, disinfect waters, and so forth. Some of of the chemicals aren't even necessary. For example canthaxanthin, it's a carotenoids used to make fish such as salmon orangy pink instead of white. Further research showed that some of the chemicals given to fish pass straight through them and are released into the ocean. Once in the sea, the toxic material does not always dissolve. Instead it floats around the sea polluting the water or will make its way back into the food chain. When aquaculture corporations dump concentrated solutions of fish feces and other dangerous chemicals into the sea, issues begin to arise. The connection with nature is an abusive relationship. Fish farming companies dump toxic sludge into the water. They introduce the aquatic ecosystem to an array of issues by adding to the pre-existing problem of ocean contamination. One such chemical happens to be It's a conflict of interest when survival and what's right for the environment become intertwined. The obvious solution is to filter the the byproduct fish farms produce. In the industry every penny counts, so they

Barber proposed a different way of fish farming. The plan was to create an entire ecosystem in order to harvest fish at a later period. On the plus side, the system is self supporting and can actually filter polluted water. The downside is up to 20% of the product is lost to predators in the process. From a business perspective, this is not a profitable arrangement. A company wouldn't invest in such a fish farming method, and the demand for fish would not be quenched as the supply would no doubt run out quickly. A better method would be to do something along the lines of crop rotation but with fish. For example, with salmon there would be a large area of land with six chambers. Each cell would be large enough for the salmon to swim freely in, but small enough to be monitored. Only every other cell would have fish in it and every six months the fish would be moved into an unused cell. This would allow a grace period for the cell to be cleaned and detox from any type of build up. On top of that, each group of fish would be harvested at different periods. Thus allowing fish to develop fully before being