Samara Herrick

The Scoping Process

The topic/challenge that my group has chosen to work on is something that is very
relevant to our rather large fishing community in San Diego. For years now the San Diego fish
industry has struggled to make ends meet because of new conservation laws that prohibits the
overfishing of popular consumer fish. This loss of profit from the Pacific Ocean caused multiple
dilemmas and it wasnt long until a solution was found in onshore fish farms. Believe it or not
aquaculture can be found a lot in the San Diego area, and it has done rather well. We are
currently farming seafood of all kinds all across San Diego and the surrounding areas. Take the
Leon Raymond Hubbard, Jr., Marine Fish Hatchery in Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad for
example. This near shore aquaculture site was founded in 1995 and has been a huge help with
recovering the Southern California White Sea Bass populations. What is also great about this
hatchery and many other Onshore aquaculture sites, is that they operate under established
permits and/or standards created to protect the regions water quality and often include regular
monitoring to ensure the standards are met. This means that these aquaculture sites are
environmentally friendly and are a plus all the way around.
Quite recently the idea of creating a mega fish farm just four miles off the coast of San
Diego was proposed. This farm could have the footprint on the ocean floor of 1.3 square milesthe size of New Yorks central park- and its goal would be to produce 11 million pounds of
yellowtail and sea bass per year. While this would help make seafood cheaper for consumers it
would have a major negative impact on our local ocean ecosystems. Unfortunately since this
aquaculture site would be in federal waters they would not have to adhere to permits or set
standards and they would be free to damage the environment as they please. San Diego
Coastkeeper, the leaders against this aquaculture, claim that open ocean aquaculture sites
have issues that range from nutrient pollution, predator and wildlife interruptions and disease.
Many of these complications stem from escaping fish. It is very common for farmed fish to
escape their pens because of inadequate nets and swim into the local ecosystem taking their
diseases with them. They then infect other sea life that they come in contact with and pollute the
ecosystem. They also become competitors in the local food systems and offset the natural
balance of the area.
Our group decided that this was an important issue to address for many reasons. The
main reason is because we live in San Diego and this fish farm could affect our communities at
a large scale. If this new fish farm will have as many issues as predicted, then we and the fish
we eat will be affected by this. For example, if the farmed fish escape and mate with their wild
counterparts, mutations and infections could occur making it unhealthy for human consumption.
This would mean that we would lose a major nutritional and economical gain from aquaculture
and fishing. Fish are a monumental part of our food system. Seafood has a high amount of
protein and is healthier than red meat. Seafood also has less saturated fat. Saturated fat
increases your chances of getting heart disease. A 3-ounce piece of sirloin has more than 3
grams of saturated fat, while 3-ounce pieces of salmon and shrimp each have less than 1 gram
of saturated fat. While health is very important, fish reproduce much faster than cattle and are
much smaller and farming them takes less space. Meaning that their is more money to

capitalize on. With farmed fish escaping into our oceans possibly damaging wildlife species
populations, we would suffer from a great loss. That is why its important for us to focus on a
way to prevent fish from escaping and important for us to contain their possible parasites or
diseases.
The specific functions our design would need to perform are split into two parts; contain
fish, and the fishs diseases. The first part of our design would be essential to just keeping the
fish within the aquaculture site. The second is to protect the environment and the other species
around the aquaculture site from any diseases the foreign farm fish may have. To be successful
our design would need to be able to perform both tasks perfectly. This is so that aquaculture will
work and the ecosystems will stay healthy and balanced as they are now. Our design would
also have to environmentally friendly and be as natural as possible so that it once again wont
affect the natural ecosystem.
Our design will have to be durable and flexible. Since it will be floating in the open ocean
it will have to be flexible in the currents and the rise and fall of the tide. It will also have to
manage the constant thrashing of many fish within it. It will probably end up being a net of some
kind because its main purpose is to contain the fish and whatever diseases they may have. It
would be best if water can flow in and out so that the fish have enough oxygen to breathe.
However, their needs to be a filter of some sort that stops the parasites that could be living on
the farm fish from traveling out on to the natural fish. It will also have to keep natural predators
from coming in and trying to eat the farm fish. If our design is not durable for this we will lose the
entire crop of fish to predators such as sharks, seals, or larger fish. Simple enough it seems, but
finding a solution to this problem can be a challenge. There are so many benefits that can be
taken advantage of in aquaculture, but there are also a lot of negative components to it as well.
Hopefully, we can create a design that can utilize nature and be a solution to the problem of fish
escaping their aquaculture sites. All and all our group has decided to take on the challenge of
finding a way to keep fish and their diseases contained within their pens at fish farms. This is
important because it can help with food shortages and health issues and our design will need to
be durable and flexible due to the open ocean currents.
We learned about our problem through a local non for profit named San Diego Coast
Keeper. We were so lucky to have a chance to learn from and base our research and project off
of such an amazing organization. Based out of Liberty Station San Diego Coastkeepers mission
is to protect and restore swimmable, fishable and drinkable waters in San Diego County.
Through their informative website and blog we learned about the San Diego aquaculture
business. We also learned about the issues that would occur from establishing an ocean
aquaculture site. This information helped to shape our groups understanding of why there
needed to be a change in the current form of ocean aquaculture. Although San Diego Coast
Keeper is against the Fish Farm entirely, our group believes that with some innovative thinking
and problem solving that a sustainable and eco friendly establishment can be created.