Fish farm waste can drift to distant shores

Washington DC (SPX) Apr 08, 2011 – Concentrated waste plumes from fish farms could travel significant distances to reach coastlines, according to a study to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Environmental Fluid Mechanics, available online now. Roz Naylor, Oliver Fringer and Jeffrey Koseff of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University found that relatively high concentrations of dissolved waste from fish pens do not consistently dilute immediately. The paper is the first detailed look at how ‘real world’ variables, such as tides, currents, the earth’s rotation and the physical structure of the pens themselves, influence the flow of waste from fish farms. The research, which was funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program, can serve as an important tool for determining the impacts of aquaculture discharge on waterways and surrounding shorelines. “This study suggests that we should not simply assume ‘dilution is the solution’ for aquaculture pollution,” said Koseff. “We discovered that the natural environment around fish pens can dramatically affect how far waste plumes travel from the source.” Dissolved substances from feces, undigested food and other forms of discharge amass near fish pens. In multiple modeling scenarios in which these factors were varied to study how each one affected the behavior of such pollution, effluent was characterized by “plumes” of highly concentrated waste that held together for great distances from the source. …

Fish Farm Waste Can Drift To Distant Shores