The following is a letter to the editor submitted by Dave Conley, senior consultant and founding partner of Ottawa-based Aquaculture Communications Group and executive director of Aquaculture without Frontiers, a post he accepted early this week. His letter is in response to Thursday’s story “Suit targets U.S. over fish farm permit.”
This is another example of the obstructionist tactics of groups with more money than intelligence. Rather than spending their money on lawyers in a protracted suit that serves no useful purpose other than to deny Kona Blue Water Farms the opportunity to pursue its business activities, they could have spent the equivalent amount on R&D and site-monitoring activities in collaboration with Kona Blue to further the science of open-ocean aquaculture. This would have been an intelligent, productive, win-win opportunity. Sadly, they prefer the out-dated pursuit of a win-lose confrontational approach.
Being a staunch opponent of aquaculture shows a lack of maturity in the leadership of these organizations, as well as a profound ignorance of the growing need to farm the oceans as we farm the land.
I suggest that the leadership of these organizations take a more enlightened approach to influencing the direction of open-ocean aquaculture by getting out of their offices, visiting Kona Blue's operations and others in the open-ocean aquaculture sector, talking to people that work in this industry every day, and opening their minds to a different way of looking at aquaculture development. I know that this is asking a lot, but I believe it is a more constructive approach than what they are now doing.
Click here to read SeafoodSource’s 28 June interview with Conley.
