Report On An Experimental Solar-heated Aquaculture System

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For the benefit of MOTHER's readers who may have missed the previous segments of the series, this is the last of four articles describing the various components of an experimental, underground hydroponic greenhouse and aquaculture unit recently built on my homestead in the mountains of northern New Mexico. The present installment deals with aquaculture.

Aquaculture is the cultivation of fish or other cold-blooded aquatic animals such as mussels, clams and crayfish under optimum controlled conditions. Fish farming—perhaps a more descriptive term—has been practiced for thousands of years in the Orient, and has recently become a profitable business in the United States. Catfish are raised on large farms throughout the South, and in Louisiana crayfish culture has proven to be a profitable commercial venture. In mountainous states such as Idaho, where an abundance of cold running water is available, fish farms provide the market with pan-sized rainbow trout at premium prices.

In this country, aquaculture—like most other farming—is run along agribusiness lines, with an eye toward maximum yields and maximum profits. Fish are "packed like sardines" in ponds or tanks in which the water is constantly circulated, filtered and aerated to keep the inhabitants from dying in their own waste products. These fish feedlots make use of high-protein"chows" manufactured by the major livestock ration companies, and hence bear no relationship at all to the organic low-energy aquaculture operations of the Orient . . . which, interestingly enough, consistently outproduce the "agribiz" methods normally used in America.

I became interested in organic aquaculture in 1971 after reading a series of articles on the subject by Dr. John Todd and Dr. William McLarney in Organic Gardening and Farming magazine. These two researchers, working at the New Alchemy Institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, have been experimenting for many years with low-energy organic food-producing methods designed for homesteads and small communities. In an article entitled "Aquaculture on the Organic Farm and Homestead", appearing in the August 1971 issue of OGF, Dr. McLarney summed up the rationale behind fish farming:

The best argument for aquaculture is based on the ever-increasing need for protein foods. Fishes and aquatic Invertebrates are far more efficient food converters than their warm-blooded counterparts, since they need expend little or no energy supporting their weight or maintaining their body temperatures. They are thus capable of producing more protein per unit area from the same amount of food.

Compare Robert Rodale's comment on the food-converting efficiency of warm-blooded animals ( OGF, April 1971):

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