Grow Fish Anywhere – Commercially, Safely In Cities and Deserts

Sea bream, a common fish farm species, can now be grown in cities and deserts, safely.

The seas and lakes of the world are rapidly losing their native fish populations, due to pollution, global warming, and over fishing. On top of this, fish farming, or aquaculture has also proven to be bad for bodies of water in which these fish are raised. But now, at least a partial solution has been found to the problems of over fishing and pollution of sea water from the feces of fish farms.  A group of Israelis from Grow Fish Anywhere have devised a way to raise fish in shallow wading pool tanks, and to detoxify the water the fish are raised in as well. The unique fish farms, innovated by Yaron Gissin, formerly a Foreign Ministry official responsible for technology. It sounds remarkably like the technology Karin had written about 2 years ago, by Prof. Yonathan Zohar (urban fish farming) in the US, but let’s hear their story.

Gissin, together with 7 partners founded Grow Fish Anywhere. By not needing even fresh seawater (the fish are raised in a mixture of fresh water and salt), and by finding a solution to the poisoning caused by the nitrates and other chemicals in fish poop, the fish can be raised in a number of environments even those in desert regions like in North Africa. In fact, if fish can be raised successfully in small plastic pools like Gissin and his associates claim to be able to do, just think what might in accomplished in large inland ocean lakes in large desert regions like the Sahara.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St47jd9TcTY[/youtube]

This is not the idea that Yaron Gissin and his friends are trying to put across. But what they do claim is that by using their method, which entails the use of special filters and bacteria to break down the nitrogen and carbon compounds found in fish waste, they hope to demonstrate that their fish farms can be located even in places suffering from severe water shortages, such as Jordan.

In this manner, Gissin claims, large amounts of fish can be successfully raised commercially to meet the growing needs of the world’s population; and with less pressure on wild fish stocks which now are depleting to a point where many types of fish are becoming endangered species.

These fish farms would prove to be a God-send to countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea where fish populations are becoming dangerously depleted.

The fish growing technology was actually invented by Hebrew University Professor Yap Van Rein, who says that the system can raise fish more quickly because its environmental system fully controls the minerals in the water and its temperature. It sounds very similar to a technology Green Prophet’s Karin had written about before. But good ideas are just that until someone makes them commercial, right?

Van Rein said he was worried by the current condition of wild fish stocks and told Globes: “There are only 90 million tons of fish in all the world’s oceans and lakes, and whole species face extinction.”

Obviously the greenest way is to stop eating fish, but maybe Grow Fish Anywhere will be the next best thing to catching depleted wild stocks. As for desert regions. People might be best advised to eat insects for much-needed and valuable protein.

Read more about fish farming and commercial fishing:
Israel Marine Ecologist Says Mediterranean Needs More Environmental Protection
Bahrain Fishermen Plea for Help With Their Catch
Eilat Fish Cages: Out of the Frying Pan and Into Ashdod Harbor