Tilapia

Summary:

Tilapia is a widely popular fish around the world. Originally native to Africa, tilapia are favored because they taste good, do not require a lot of time to develop, or go from the aqua farm to household plates, the species tolerates crowding (which makes aquaculture easier), they reproduce quickly, and do not need meat based food, but mosquitoes, algae, lake plants, corn, and soy. 

Although tilapia are easy to use as food, there are a lot of problems with them. If they get out of their aqua farm, according to Aaron McNevin, “tilapia is one of the most invasive species known, and are very hard to get rid of when they are established, due to their aggressive breeding and feeding.” Also, environmentalists argue that intensive and unregulated tilapia farming is damaging ecosystems in poor countries with practices generally prohibited in the United States, like breeding huge numbers of fish in cages in natural lakes, where eutrophication can occur. As said by Dr. Jeffery McCrary, “We wouldn’t allow tilapia to be farmed in the United States the way they are farmed here, so why are we willing to eat them?”

Some other problems with tilapia are that even though they are a good source of protein, compared to other fish, they have lesser amounts of fish oils, which assist brain development, and protect against heart disease, stroke, and abnormal heart rhythms. They also have a lesser amount of Omega-3 fatty acids than other fish.

Commentary:

In my opinion, the issues with tilapia are very real, and I agree with the problems and opinions in the article. This issue matters, because first, people need to get the nutrients that they need, and eating tilapia is not as efficient as eating other fish, would be to obtain these nutrients. Second, if tilapia are an invasive species, then we really should really not use them because if they do escape, that means the crash of the ecosystem where they escaped. Third, the aqua farming of any species means low species diversity, which means that disease can spread rapidly, which ties into the use of antibiotics to eliminate the diseases, which goes back into low species diversity.

\

This article is a great example of what we have learned in class about aquaculture, positive feedbacks, and genetics. These things are really important to learn, because we need to know how to, when we have an idea, to anticipate the possible outcomes of our ideas, so we can