And now for something completely different
Green to the Gills
By PAUL GREENBERG
New York Times Magazine
On a bright, clear Arctic morning this March, I found myself in the Norwegian city of Tromso, staring down into a large green fiberglass tub in which several hundred sexually aroused cod described a slow, lazy circle in the temperature-controlled water below. Normally this is the kind of thing I enjoy. As a fisherman, I like being in the presence of fish. The living animal is somehow exhilarating, whether glimpsed crashing bait alongside a jetty or glowing vague and green 20 feet below the surface. A fish's appearance in the wild feels special and makes the fisherman feel lucky.
But luck had nothing to do with the cod swimming in the Norwegian tub that day. To the contrary, the fish in Tromso were there because of calculated human effort, and their stay in Tromso would allow them to participate in the culmination of a century of applied science. They were generation F0, the founding generation in a selective breeding program that aims to create a whole new race of cod. The progeny of wild cod gathered up from a variety of different fiords and offshore shoals, they were implanted with identifying microchips and paired up according to a methodology developed in some of Norway's most high-powered research institutions. After they are bred with their predetermined mates, their offspring, generation F1, will be grown in captivity to adulthood. Then the fastest-growing of the F1's will be selected for further breeding, resulting eventually in an even-more-tailored generation F2. "And then we'll do the same again," said Kjersti Fjalestad, the director of the cod-breeding program at the Norwegian Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture Research, while the cod swam in circles beneath us. "Compare the families, find the best ones, and that's kind of the never-ending story."
Breeding cod in an Arctic outpost might at first seem like one of those esoteric scientific endeavors doomed to be hidden away in a poor doctoral candidate's obscure Ph.D. thesis. But the Tromso cod-breeding facility is in fact the latest development in a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we eat. Until recently, all of the world's seafood was wild. Indeed, ocean fish are the last wild food on earth we eat with any regularity. That is all about to change. Fish farming, or "aquaculture," as the practice is called by its practitioners, is now the fastest-growing form of food production in the world. Since 1990, it has increased at a rate of 10 percent a year. If this trends continues, within a decade more seafood will come from farms than from the wild.
(There is more.)
By PAUL GREENBERG
New York Times Magazine
On a bright, clear Arctic morning this March, I found myself in the Norwegian city of Tromso, staring down into a large green fiberglass tub in which several hundred sexually aroused cod described a slow, lazy circle in the temperature-controlled water below. Normally this is the kind of thing I enjoy. As a fisherman, I like being in the presence of fish. The living animal is somehow exhilarating, whether glimpsed crashing bait alongside a jetty or glowing vague and green 20 feet below the surface. A fish's appearance in the wild feels special and makes the fisherman feel lucky.
But luck had nothing to do with the cod swimming in the Norwegian tub that day. To the contrary, the fish in Tromso were there because of calculated human effort, and their stay in Tromso would allow them to participate in the culmination of a century of applied science. They were generation F0, the founding generation in a selective breeding program that aims to create a whole new race of cod. The progeny of wild cod gathered up from a variety of different fiords and offshore shoals, they were implanted with identifying microchips and paired up according to a methodology developed in some of Norway's most high-powered research institutions. After they are bred with their predetermined mates, their offspring, generation F1, will be grown in captivity to adulthood. Then the fastest-growing of the F1's will be selected for further breeding, resulting eventually in an even-more-tailored generation F2. "And then we'll do the same again," said Kjersti Fjalestad, the director of the cod-breeding program at the Norwegian Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture Research, while the cod swam in circles beneath us. "Compare the families, find the best ones, and that's kind of the never-ending story."
Breeding cod in an Arctic outpost might at first seem like one of those esoteric scientific endeavors doomed to be hidden away in a poor doctoral candidate's obscure Ph.D. thesis. But the Tromso cod-breeding facility is in fact the latest development in a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we eat. Until recently, all of the world's seafood was wild. Indeed, ocean fish are the last wild food on earth we eat with any regularity. That is all about to change. Fish farming, or "aquaculture," as the practice is called by its practitioners, is now the fastest-growing form of food production in the world. Since 1990, it has increased at a rate of 10 percent a year. If this trends continues, within a decade more seafood will come from farms than from the wild.
(There is more.)
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