When Fish Moo

No, it's not genetically modified fish. Rather, today we learn that the Bush Administration wants to open up abandoned oil rigs for use in open-sea Mariculture (fish farming).

Oddly, this is an example of Bush policy that I think is a good idea. Pardon me a moment.

(Showers, scrubs self with wire brush.)

Seriously, fish is one of the best forms of animal protein available to us and traditional industrial farming is rapidly strip-mining the ocean. We already get most of our salmon from fish farms, but that's part of the problem - the fish we like most (like Salmon and Tuna) are carnivores, meaning the amount of food our food needs is even worse than with cattle. What we need is a policy to build a whole food chain for our fish farms. Grow plant-eating fish like Tilapia, then feed those to the farmed tuna and salmon. This is pretty basic (a ten-year old could figure it out) but at the moment we
feed farmed salmon several times their weight in caught fish - we'd be better off eating the salmon's food. But that's the same arguments the vegetarians use, isn't it?

Anyway, open-ocean mariculture is necessary, and here's hoping Bush doesn't fuck it up. Totally.