Offshore aquaculture destroys the commercial fishing

industry
Food and Water Watch July 9 2008
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/factsheet/ocean-fish-farming-can-hurtcommercial-fishing/
Commercial fishermen could lose money due to ocean fish farming. In fact,
often fishermen lose jobs when there is farming of species that are also wild
caught. This can happen because farming produces more fish, all the time,
usually at a cheaper rate than catching them, so there is less of a market for
wild fish. Prices for fish could go down because there is so much fish available
and because companies can charge less for the fish, which are cheaper to
grow on the farms than they are to catch through fishing. Often, fishermen
cannot compete, especially with rising oil and gas prices. Foreign investors
(who have already shown interest and own much of the ocean fish farming
operations worldwide) might establish facilities using their own money and
staff, then ship the production elsewhere, leaving the United States with little
more than a mess in our waters that could hurt wild fish populations and
critical habitat. Either way, commercial fishermen could lose out.

Offshore aquaculture competes with and destroys the

livelihood of commercial fishers
Food & Water Watch 2011 Fishy Farms: The Governments Push for
Factory Farming in Our Oceans Copyright October 2011 by
http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/FishyFarms.pdf
Many commercial fishermen are suffering from competition with cheap
seafood imported from other countries, as well as by disasters such as
Hurricane Katrina and the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion. They fear that
the advent of factory fish farming in the ocean will further damage their
livelihoods. The state of Alaska banned open ocean aquaculture in its state
waters in 1990 as fishermen experienced stiff competition from cheaper mass
produced farmed salmon grown in Canada and other countries. The rise of
salmon farms was dealing a hard blow to fishermen facing competition from
mass produced farmed salmon.

Aquaculture trades off with commercial fishing.

Food Freedom, Protect Our Oceans from Factory Fish Farms Posted on
June 11, 2010
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/protect-our-oceans-fromfactory-fish-farms/
Bad for communities: Factory fish farms can interfere with the livelihoods of
commercial and recreational fishermen by taking over traditional fishing
grounds or harming wild fish populations. Plus, these fish farms are likely to
follow existing seafood trade patterns and ship their product elsewhere for
higher profits, leaving the United States .

Commercial fishing industry key to the economy

NOAA, 3/7/13,
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/mediacenter/2013/03/07_noaa_report_finds_comm
ercial_and_recreational.html
U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $199
billion in sales and supported 1.7 million jobs in the nations economy in
2011, according to a new economic report released by NOAAs Fisheries
Service. The report, Fisheries Economics of the United States 2011, is
published annually on a two-year lag to allow data collection, analysis, and
peer review. It provides economic statistics on U.S. commercial and
recreational fisheries and marine-related businesses for each coastal state
and the nation. Key to the report are the economic effects--jobs, sales,
income, and value added to Gross National Product--of the commercial and
recreational fishing industries. Economic impact measures how sales in
each sector ripple throughout the state and national economy as each dollar
spent generates additional sales by other firms and consumers. The seafood
industryharvesters, seafood processors and dealers, seafood wholesalers
and retailersgenerated $129 billion in sales impacts, $37 billion in income
impacts and supported 1.2 million jobs in 2011, the most recent year
included in the report. Recreational fishing generated $70 billion in sales
impacts, $20 billion in income impacts, and supported 455,000 jobs in 2011.
Compared to 2010, the numbers are up for all of these impacts except
commercial seafood sales. Commercial and recreational fishing are integral
parts of the nations social and economic fabric, said Sam Rauch, deputy
assistant NOAA administrator for NOAAs Fisheries Service. While theres still
work to do, to see landings and value climb in 2011 shows were moving in
the right direction, even in this time of challenging transition for many fishing
communities. The annual report also breaks down the sales impacts, income
impacts and job figures for each coastal state. The five states that generated
the most jobs from fishing in 2011 were California, Massachusetts, Florida,
Washington, and Alaska. The states with the most growth in the number of
commercial fishing jobs compared to 2010 were Alabama (76 percent, net
increase of 4,743 jobs), Mississippi (45 percent, net increase of 1,722 jobs),
Oregon (32 percent, net increase of 4,483 jobs), Louisiana (29 percent, net
increase of 7,272 jobs), and Alaska (17 percent, net increase of 9,288 jobs).
The greatest portion of the nations landings revenue generated by the
commercial fishing industry was in Alaska ($1.9 billion), followed by
Massachusetts ($433 million), and Maine ($381 million). Saltwater
recreational fishing generated its highest economic effect in sales impacts
and jobs in West Florida ($4.9 billion sales, 47,000 jobs) East Florida ($3.3
billion sales, 29,000 jobs); Louisiana ($2 billion sales, 18,000 jobs); North
Carolina ($2 billion sales, 18,000 jobs); Texas ($1.9 billion sales, 15,000 jobs);
and New Jersey (1.7 billion sales, 10,000 jobs).

Coastal economies drive the US economy

Center for the Blue Economy at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies, State of the U.S. Ocean and Coastal Economies
2014 http://maine.sierraclub.org/NOEP_National_Report_2014.pdf
The coastal economy of the United States is big by any absolute or relative
standard, and the economy of the coastal states largely drives the US
economy. Coastal states contributed 81% of US employment in 2012 and
84% of total US GDP. Within these states, the shore adjacent counties
comprise 37% of overall employment on just 17.5% of US land area,
indicating that the concentration of the nations economy is found near the
oceans and Great Lakes