Editor’s note: The following is a letter to the editor from Bill Spencer, president and CEO of Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc. The Honolulu company’s Oceansphere™ cage is used to raise fish in the open ocean.
Food & Water Watch is a multi-million dollar Washington, D.C., activist organization that has been directly attacking open-ocean aquaculture in Congress and in Hawaii for years. They are anti-private industry, anti-progress and anti-technology. This is how they make money, by trying to stop things.
Are we going to let these shrill activists dictate seafood-security policy for the nation? Hawaii is the only state in the nation that has a regulatory infrastructure that allows companies to farm the ocean as we farm the land. Food & Water Watch has protested Hawaii’s budding open ocean aquaculture industry by paying local activists, spending thousands of dollars on media and community outreach and thoughtless legislation. Their whining, however, has fallen on deaf ears. Why? They have no scientific standing and no legitimate basis for their claims. They want to prevent Hawaii’s law from being a model for our nation.
Food & Water Watch employees are activists, not scientists. They have no valid evidence about open ocean fish farming in Hawaii to justify their position. My company, Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc., has fully disclosed every aspect of what we are doing in our Environmental Impact Statement, our Cultural Impact Assessment, our Conservation District Use Application, our Army Corp of Engineers Section 10 permit application, our NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) application, and our Costal Zone Management Consistency Review application, all of which allow transparency, thorough public review and long periods for public comment. They protest, but their protests are unfounded. If they were valid, why would our company have been granted a 35-year lease to move forward?
Food & Water Watch uses “might” language and wild theories that force us to prove a negative. They call this the precautionary principle, the idea that governments should step in and eliminate all risks in projects like ours before allowing them to go forward. This is a favorite weapon of activist groups that want to stop things with endless environmental assessments and re-assessments.
“Better safe than sorry. Can’t be too careful. We have a right to proof and if you can’t prove it before you try, then you can’t do it.” The Wall Street Journal calls this the “paralyzing principle” because it opens the door to an endless supply of theories and fear mongering, and the result is usually a battle of data versus fantasy. When industry provides the data, they don’t accept it, because it’s from industry. They want the government (read the taxpayers) to collect the data. As long as Food & Water Watch can pull “risks” out of thin air, they will tie up the regulatory process ad infinitum and drive legitimate business out of business.
That’s the real goal behind “precautionary” challenges. If they had their way, the government would mandate we all wear rubber boots in case lightning strikes.
Hawaii Oceanic Technology has met the highest standard that Hawaii can impose and we have demonstrated to our best ability a finding of no significant negative environmental impact from our project. On the positive side we provide food security and economic benefit for the people of Hawaii. A national policy encouraging open-ocean fish farming in our Exclusive Economic Zone would do the same. Food & Water Watch, and their ilk, have no authority to stop us. Now, the nation faces the challenge of reducing our dependence on foreign seafood. The government has finally articulated a thoughtful policy and Food & Water Watch is using the same dirty tricks they have tried in Hawaii.
The U.S. imports 85 percent of the seafood we consume, and half of that is farmed. This is our third largest import behind oil and autos. The government has just announced that Americans should double their seafood consumption. Yet at the same time, our seafood industry and coastal communities are in dire straits and rising costs make traditional fishing methods inefficient. Our only choice as a nation is to be part of the USD 100 billion aquaculture industry, which scientists agree must double in the next 10 years. The draft Department of Commerce and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration policy statements in support of open-ocean fish farming is an important and critical step forward. We cannot let the activists steer the debate. The topic is food security, jobs and righting the balance of seafood trade. We cannot afford to let Food & Water Watch tip the scales toward junk science, fear mongering and fantasy.
Bill Spencer
President and CEO
Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc.
Honolulu
