Aquaculture

By Jill Schwartz

Jack Morales spent countless hours as a child helping his mother sell fish at a market in their neighborhood. What he was most curious about was where the fish came from. The answer he was most eager to hear from his mother was that the fish would stop coming.

If the supply ran dry, that would leave him more time to play with his friends after school. But the fish never stopped being delivered.

For the sustainable aquaculture world, that is a good thing. The experience with his mother affected – perhaps subconsciously – the major decisions Jack made about his career path.

He has spent the past 15 years working in aquaculture and earned a PhD in the subject from one of the most reputable aquaculture schools in the world – University of Stirling. He began managing the aquaculture program for the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) in November and is actively engaged in two of the Aquaculture Dialogues – pangasius and tilapia. He is even on the Steering Committee for both Dialogues, a time commitment that he seems more than willing to make. 

“The Dialogues can be time consuming but they are very important and I am confident they will have a good impact on the aquaculture industry,” Jack said during an interview at the Boston International Seafood Show, thousands of miles from his home in Asia. “We want the industry to be more sustainable. That is not much to ask when you consider the importance of aquaculture.”

Like many people working in aquaculture, Jack thinks minimizing or eliminating the environmental impacts associated with fish farming is critical if the industry is to become sustainable. That is why he is spending a considerable amount of time at SFP monitoring water quality at pangasius farms in the lower Mekong basin, encouraging fish feed manufacturers to disclose the sources of the ingredients in their feed, and developing a white paper about the potential ecological risks of tilapia and how to mitigate such risks.

But he’s also interested in the social impacts of aquaculture because he believes the social impacts affect the environment and vice versa. Fortunately, he has valuable insights on the issue, as he has on the ground experience addressing social impacts in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, China and Mexico. For example, he has designed and implemented community appraisals for fishing communities and taught government officials how and why to do sustainable rural livelihood analyses.

“One of the biggest social issues that needs to be addressed, for example, is salaries for women who work in aquaculture,” he said. “Throughout Southeast Asia, most women make less than men because there is a feeling the women are not strong enough to operate the equipment. Fortunately these issues are beginning to be addressed in the standards."

A project on his plate that he is particularly excited about is comparing three sets of tilapia aquaculture standards that are under development by the Aquaculture Dialogues, GlobalGAP and the Global Aquaculture Alliance.

“I never thought there would be so many standards,” he said. “It would be best to just have one standard. We’ll do the study and then the public can use it to decide which standards address their concerns about food safety and environmental and social sustainability.”