Local Community Members Call On Hubbs-SeaWorld To Stop Their Support Of Planned Fish Farm

Andrianna Natsoulaslatest, Press Releases

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, March 14th, 2023

For Additional Information: Jake Schwartz, jake@greencorps.org, (215) 485-8400

Local Community Members Call On Hubbs-SeaWorld To Stop Their Support Of Planned Fish Farm

As a result of Hubbs-SeaWorld’s support in helping design and develop the Pacific Ocean AquaFarms fish farm, residents of San Diego are calling on the pillar of the community to “forget the fish farm.”

San Diego, CA – Today, several dozens San Diego fishermen, chefs, and local residents joined together to voice their opposition to the proposed Pacific Ocean AquaFarms fish farm. This 28 pen facility would be built three miles off the coast of Mission Bay and raise 5,000 metric tons of California Yellowtail a year. Specifically, rally attendees called on Don Kent, the President of Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, to halt SeaWorld’s technical and institutional support of this fish farm.

“Offshore finfish farming does not benefit fishing communities, the environment, or healthy food production – the only ones who profit are a handful of corporations. These heavily polluting facilities simply have no place in Southern California,” said Jake Schwartz, an Organizer with Don’t Cage Our Oceans.

Industrial-scale offshore fish farming is detrimental to our oceans and marine animals. These facilities pump antibiotics and pesticides into the pens to kill the sea lice and other diseases, but in the process these chemicals mix with the excess feed and fish waste and create a toxic sludge that can cause dead zones in the ocean, jeopardizing the health and well-being of all sea life in those areas.

"An industrial fish farm off the coast of San Diego would be an ecological nightmare," said Phillip Musegaas, Executive Director of San Diego Coastkeeper. “This project would directly pollute our coastal waters and pose a huge risk to Humpback and Gray Whales, along with other marine life, which could get entangled in its floating nets. We need to focus on restoring our oceans, not industrializing them." 

Hubbs-SeaWorld is one of the two major entities behind this fish farm and plans to provide direct scientific and technical support. 30 rally-goers gathered at Ski Beach, directly across the bridge from SeaWorld, to build visibility around this issue and the conflict between SeaWorld’s conservation work and their support for this facility. A mix of college students and community members flanked the speakers holding signs that said “Forget The Fish Farm” and “Let Fishermen Fish.” The iconic Shamu Stadium and Sky Tower were clearly in sight behind the speakers. 

“This proposed development, regardless of the number of pens, is located just one mile from the South La Jolla Marine Protected Area,” said John Law, a fisherman who’s been fishing in and around Mission Bay for decades. “Loss to access of the sea floor and kelp beds would be devastating to commercial and recreational fishermen." 

There are proposed fish farm sites up the Southern California coast as far north as the Santa Barbara Channel. The one in San Diego, however, would be the first commercial finfish farm in federal waters.

“From the toxic algae blooms that finfish farming can cause, to the fishermen that it could put out of business, this is a harmful practice and we cannot allow it to come to our common oceans,” said Andrianna Natsoulas, Campaign Director of Don’t Cage Our Oceans. “We must not let these corporations get a foot in the door to take over the public resource that is the Pacific Ocean. The stakes are too high, and our waters too valuable, to allow for this dangerous system of producing food.”

Don’t Cage Our Oceans is a diverse, nation-wide coalition of organizations and businesses fighting offshore fish farming, while uplifting values-based seafood systems led by local communities.