I know that fish farming, aquaculture, is what led to the release of Asian carp into the Missisippi river and from there to just about everywhere else upstream. That's not the only negative thing that has been caused by fish farming, but is probably the most detrimental to date.
Fish farming is well on it's way to wiping out the largest freshwater fishery in the world. The Great Lakes!
The carp are killing off everything. Although, in 50 years we'll still have fish, but they'll all be asian carp.
Our waterways will be polluted with toxic blue-green algae and you won't be able to eat the carp because they will be toxic with stored high concentrations of the algae themselves.
Any large scale farming is detrimental to our long term survival and unsustainable. Fish farming has nothing to do with sustainable harvest or permaculture. Feeding fish a nearly 100% corn diet is just as un-natural as feeding cows corn.
I don't know how someone thinks they can control or reduce the risks associated with fish farming when you consider the potential for flooding, leaching of water, or animals and birds carrying disease and invasive foreign species from these farms to our natural waterways.
Heck, you yourself said that many fish farms are merely netted in areas of a larger natural body of water. How would you suppose these fish farmers keep the threat of diseases and invasive species from entering the ecosystem when the only thing seperating the farm from the natural waterway is a net?
I don't eat, and never will eat farm raised fish. Nasty! The OP asked what people thought about fish farming. That's what myself and many others think about it. Fish farming is bad news.
Fish farming is only about making money and has nothing to do with having fish in 50 years. If fish are gonna live in your netted in fish farm they're gonna live on the other side of the net too. Duh!
Farmed fish do not have higher nutritional content nor do they taste better. Generally speaking their flesh is mushy, pale and lacks flavor when compared to their wild relatives. Many fish farms are in enclosed ponds that were dug out of old farm fields. Farm fields that are loaded with toxic chemicals that easily absorb into the bodies of fish. These chemicals are then transferred to you , myself and our children. Fish farms enhance this effect because the fish are concentrated into an area which is constantly being stirred up by all the frenzied activity of the fish feeding on corn. What about the corn that sinks, fish don't eat that?
C'mon, trying to justify fish farming as a sustainable and acceptable form of anything is a joke.:usaflag: