Response to opinion column from PETA
Scott Miller from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (West Hawaii Today, Oct. 2) tried to dissuade your readers from eating seafood by presenting his perspective on the industry and invoking the bogeyman of “mercury.”
How many of your readers would die from following this advice? And would our planet be better off for it?
The definitive meta-analysis of the risks and benefits of eating seafood (Mozaffarian and Rimm, JAMA, 2006) concluded that — for the sake of their health — Americans should be doubling the amount of seafood that they eat!
If Americans ate twice as much seafood, then there would be a 36% reduction in deaths from heart disease and a 17% reduction in mortality overall. That’s an awful lot of kupuna that might still be with us.
Miller also grossly misrepresents the environmental impacts of aquaculture. Properly sited, well-managed aquaculture operations — such as Kona’s own Blue Ocean Mariculture, offshore from Makako Bay — have negligible, often immeasurable impacts on ocean water quality, seafloor surrounding the farm, or nearby coral reefs and fish stocks.
The Hawaiian Kanpachi from BOM’s farm are loaded with heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids and are certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the world’s most rigorous scheme for assessing aquaculture’s environmental and social footprint.
The rational, science-driven environmental community is taking note. The Environmental Defense Fund is now advocating for expansion of aquaculture (https://www.edf.org/oceans/aquaculture) and is championing the SEAFood Act to support offshore aquaculture legislation for the U.S Exclusive Economic Zone.
Environmentalists, academics, chefs such as Andrew Zimmern, and industry experts (such as BOM and Ocean Era) have joined in the Coalition for Sustainable Aquaculture to advance these causes.
Our planet, and our community’s health, would be far better served if your op-ed writers paid more attention to the evidence on the water, and less to their own, emotion-driven agenda.
Neil Anthony Sims
CEO, Ocean Era Inc.,
Kailua-Kona
