Aquaculture

By Jill Schwartz

Seven years ago, “aquaculture” was not an everyday word for Mary Turnipseed. In fact, she said recently that she wasn’t even quite sure back then what it meant. As a College of William and Mary graduate student immersed in marine ecology classes, Mary was more likely to talk about hydrothermal vent mussel beds and other deep-sea ecosystems than farmed fish.

But then there was a sea change. Mary decided she could make a bigger impact in the world if she focused on ocean conservation rather than biodiversity. So, as she did when studying biodiversity, she immersed herself in all things conservation and concluded that what she was most interested in was the connection between conservation and sustainable seafood.

"If we can raise and catch fish and shellfish more sustainably, we will get a lot closer to conserving and restoring ocean ecosystems," said Mary, a PhD student at Duke University.

Her first gig in the seafood arena was with the Blue Ocean Institute.  As a senior researcher for the organization’s "From Sea to Table" program, she used sustainability criteria to rank various fisheries and aquaculture operations. She also spent a lot of time communicating Blue Ocean’s seafood recommendations to the general public and working with chefs and corporations to shift their seafood purchasing towards more sustainable choices.

Although this work was rewarding, Mary wanted to think and work at more of a global scale. She realized that marine ecosystems worldwide were being degraded by irresponsible fishing and aquaculture in order to meet the global demand for seafood.

It’s not a surprise, then, that she is now part of an initiative to create a vision for a global sustainable seafood system. She and a team of other academics, conservationists and seafood industry representatives from around the world are trying to “link knowledge about how the global seafood trade works with knowledge about the ecological impacts of fisheries and aquaculture operations so that we can…..pinpoint ways to shift the global seafood trade away from harming marine ecosystems and towards supporting their restoration.” One of their approaches will be to build off of lessons learned from the sustainable agriculture movement.

Mary also is working with participants of the Tilapia Aquaculture Dialogue to create global standards for the tilapia farming industry. As part of this process, she is researching the important issue of escapes. Her research will be used to help shape the standards related to minimizing the ecological impacts associated with tilapia that escape from farms.

"I think aquaculture is the future, and I truly believe in the aquaculture standards," said Mary, who saw her first fish farm when she attended a meeting of the Catfish Aquaculture Dialogue several years ago. "The standards will help set the bar high and push the industry in the right direction."

She also supports the process used by the Dialogues to create standards.

"When you are in a classroom all day, you forget that there are people outside of universities and NGOs who care about the same things you care about. It’s heartening, at the Dialogues, to meet the producers who are putting ideas about better practices to use."