agriculture – Jessica S. McKenzie

Photos: The environmental hazards of farming fish in a warming world

Additional photos from my reporting trip to Chile that didn’t make it into Patagonian paradise lost? The environmental hazards of farming fish in a warming world. Photo credit: Jessica McKenzie

Crew member Evelyn on the Centinela in Dalcahue.
Thomas Montt preparing the Centinela in Dalcahue.
A compressed cube of dried luche, a kind of edible seaweed.
A map of the Los Lagos region.
A salmon farm.
A salmon farm.
Salmon farm through a window on the Centinela.
A salmon farm.
Salmon farm workers.
A boat loaded with bags of fish food.
The frame of a new salmon farm ready to be towed out from Quellón.
A mussel farm near Quellón.
The silhouette of a fishing boat at sunset, with the Corcovado Volcano on the left.
The moon over Corcovado Volcano.
Corcovado Volcano.
A pelican in front of a beach covered in plastic trash.
An abandoned salmon farm with pieces falling off into the water.
A salmon farm with the corner of the netting that keeps sea lions out pulling away from the corner.
A sea lion hanging out near a salmon farm with the protective netting falling off.
A salmon farm at sunset.
An abandoned salmon farm with lots of trash strewn about.
Islote Nihuel
A salmon farm
A salmon farm covered in tarps
Workers at a salmon farm
Oxygen tanks on a salmon farm.
Salmon farm
Salmon farm
Salmon farm
A beach covered in plastic trash.
A salmon farm
A trail of scummy water flowing out from a salmon farm.
A salmon farm off the island of Caguach, with luga drying on Ana Levañanco’s front yard in the foreground.
Plastic waste at the high tide line on the beach on Caguach.
Government officials monitor local fishermen unloading shellfish in Dalcahue.
Sunset in Chile
Gathering at low tide in Dalcahue
Pelicans in Chile
A salmon farm with a yellow tube moving fish, possibly to give them a chemical bath to treat sea lice.
A salmon farm with a yellow tube filled with fish, possibly to give them a chemical bath to treat sea lice.
A salmon farm in Comau Fjord.
Night lights at an inactive salmon farm (foreground) and an active salmon farm (hazy light in background) in Comau Fjord.
A sailboat and ferry in Comau Fjord
A salmon pen collapsing into the water in Puerto Montt.
Long lines of bags of salmon food ready to be transported to salmon farms in Puerto Montt.
Boats loaded with salmon food bags in Puerto Montt.
A boat probably being loaded with juvenile salmon to be transported out to a farm.

Bulletin: Patagonian paradise lost? The environmental hazards of farming fish in a warming world

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center and republished by Mother Jones as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

Comau Fjord is a sliver of sea framed by thickly forested mountain slopes. Melting glaciers peek between the crags. Waterfalls tumble down mountainsides, faint lines across vast expanses of gray rock. It is quintessential Chilean Patagonia, but in the austral summer of 2021, the narrow fjord filled with the smell of putrefying fish.

The salmon farms that populate the remote glacial fjord were in crisis. A massive algal bloom was suffocating salmon in their pens.

Boris Hernandez, a third-generation resident who lives in a house at the edge of the fjord, went out on the water for a closer look. He saw a boat sucking dead fish from one of the salmon farms and spewing pink liquid—a mix of seawater, liquified salmon remains, and algae—out the boat’s other side.

Hernandez contacted Thomas Montt, who had recently visited Comau Fjord and expressed concern about the proliferation of salmon farming operations in the area. A few days later, Montt came by boat with a photographer to document masses of dead salmon rotting in nets on the water.

“It was the biggest organic spill I had ever seen,” Montt recalled. “It’s something you can’t imagine. It’s hard to visualize the amount of organic garbage that was floating on the water and everywhere. It would go into the bathroom of the boat, it would go in the cooling system, it would go on your hands. Everything was oily, fishy, messy.”

That was early 2021. By April of that year, just one salmon company, Camanchaca, had lost 1.3 million fish—approximately 2,500 tons. By the end of the month, total losses in the fjord had reached 6,000 tons.

As bad as that sounds, it pales in comparison to 2016, when a red tide of algae killed approximately 27 million salmon in Chile, a staggering loss of more than 110,000 tons of fish. More salmon died in two weeks than would be expected to die in two years of normal production. Jose Miguel Burgos, the then-head of Sernapesca, the governmental office that oversees fishing and aquaculture, said the dead salmon could easily fill 14 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Bulletin: Latest buzz: rare bees essential part of diverse, resilient ecosystems

A new study published in the Royal Society’s journal for biological sciences analyzed over 20,000 bee-flower interactions in New Jersey to assess the value of bee diversity in wild plant communities. The researchers found that the number of functionally important bee species increased with the number of plant species in a community. Put more plainly, diverse ecosystems require greater bee diversity.

Bulletin: Reinventing meat to stave off climate crisis—and the next pandemic

Are we eating our way into climate crisis?

The global food system is responsible for between 21 and 37 percent of annual emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Roughly half of the world’s land surface is used for agriculture, and 96 percent of the world’s mammalian biomass is either human or livestock, chiefly pigs and cattle. And the global appetite for meat is only predicted to grow.

Bruce Friedrich believes that there is a better way to make and eat meat. He founded the Good Food Institute to advance the future of alternative meats, including plant-based meat made from—duh—plants (like pea protein and coconut oil), and cultivated meats, which are grown from animal cells.

In this interview with Bulletin associate editor Jessica McKenzie, Friedrich elaborates on Good Food Institute’s theory of change, why it is working with—not against—meat companies, how alternative meats could help prevent the next pandemic, and how they can achieve taste, texture, and price parity with meat. He also responds to criticisms that alternative meats are nothing more than corporate greenwashing.

The Counter: Can canners still trust the Ball Blue Book, cornerstone of the American canning canon?

Last August, the Iowa State University (ISU) Extension and Outreach—the arm of the land-grant university that works directly with farmers, business owners, and families on practical science applications—quietly informed 4-H members that canned goods made with recipes from the Ball Blue Book would no longer be accepted for exhibits at county fairs. A year later, the news that ISU Extension was no longer recommending the Ball Blue Book, not just to 4-H, but to any home canner, roiled the Canning subreddit, an online community with nearly 80,000 members.