We're used to getting the fish we eat from the ocean. But legislation proposed by the Bush administration early this month seeks to fundamentally change the way we use our oceans to harvest fish.

The federal agency that regulates fishing wants to open the deep ocean to offshore aquaculture, floating cages in which high-value fish like tuna and striped bass can be grown. While onshore operations growing species like tilapia and catfish have flourished, the United States has lagged behind countries like Japan, Australia and even Mexico in welcoming such floating fish farms to its federal waters.

The first West Coast project in the pipeline has its roots in a fish hatchery on the banks of Agua Hedionda in Carlsbad, where scientists honed their skills in raising fish destined for our dinner plates. The Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute is now seeking an even more exclusive address in which to conduct its aquaculture experiments: an oil platform between the Channel Islands and Ventura.

Built by Chevron in 1979, Platform Grace pumped its last drop of oil nine years ago. It now serves as a transfer station for oil pumped at another platform, but Hubbs-Sea World would like to bring it back to life.

The institute has proposed a $10 million project to grow a range of high-value finfish — white seabass, striped bass, California halibut, California yellowtail and bluefin tuna — in four floating cages, while growing red abalone and mussels on the platform itself.

The project is undergoing a lengthy review by a school of government agencies; the California Coastal Commission, worried about its impact on the state's shoreline and resources, is vying for jurisdiction as well.

Protections missing

Critics think the Hubbs-Sea World project, indeed the whole federal push for offshore aquaculture, smells worse than fishy. Environmentalists and fishermen decry the lack of environmental protections included in the legislation, fretting about everything from diseased fish escaping the pens to waste from aquatic feedlots collecting on the ocean floor.

And don't get them started on the oil platforms: Some see the legislation as yet another Bush giveaway to oil companies, enabling them to shirk their legal obligations to dismantle oil rigs and clean up around the sea floor once the wells run dry.

Why do our oceans, already teeming with fish, need fish farms, you might ask? If you still console your jilted friends with "There's always more fish in the sea," you've really missed the boat.

Global fish populations are in serious trouble, just when the world is demanding more and more seafood. Aquaculture, the marine equivalent of the modern industrialized farm industry, is doing its best to pick up the slack.

For more than a decade, the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also called NOAA Fisheries, has been considering allowing aquaculture in the federally controlled Exclusive Economic Zone — ocean waters from three to 200 miles off U.S. shores.

On June 7, the Bush administration unveiled its much-anticipated national offshore aquaculture legislation before sending it to Capitol Hill. The bill would give the secretary of commerce authority to approve aquaculture projects in 3.4 million square miles of federally controlled oceans.

Don Kent, Hubbs-Sea World's president, said offshore aquaculture will help the country more efficiently provide food for its citizens. "A small fraction of ocean could be used to grow a lot of seafood in very clean water and have minimal impact on the environment," he said.

In search of cleaner water

Kent said the institute was keen to experiment in the relatively pristine waters of the open sea, after struggling with poor water quality in Agua Hedionda and Mission Bay for more than a decade. He said the multiple users of Agua Hedionda — including the Encina power plant, which donated the hatchery's land; recreational fishermen; waterskiers; and hundreds of miles of storm drains that empty into the lagoon — have forced the institute to use mostly energy-intensive recirculated water to grow the hundreds of thousands of white seabass it releases into Southern California's coastal waters each year.

"Lawn fertilizer drains into the lagoon," Kent said. "Anything that's put into the strawberry fields ends up in our water."

On a larger scale, the same concerns are driving the opposition, which sees aquaculture's interest in the open seas as a revival of the reviled "dilution is the solution to pollution" mind-set. Critics contend that the lack of environmental standards in the proposed regulations don't require the commerce secretary and NOAA Fisheries to safeguard the oceans' health.

"If it does go forward, it should be done in such a way that protects marine ecosystems and commercial and recreational fisheries," said Becky Goldburg, senior scientist with Environmental Defense. "This doesn't do that."

Though fishermen and environmentalists are often at odds, many have united to oppose the offshore aquaculture bill. Zeke Grader, the head of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said, "The main driving factor here is not taking care of the world's starving masses, or any seafood deficit in the U.S., but people who think they can make a quick profit by very lax government regulation — at the expense of the environment and other fisheries."

To experiment or resist

If the demand for seafood is broad and growing — projections are that it will triple by 2025 — so is the opposition to aquaculture. Salmon farms off the British Columbia coast have been charged with spreading diseases and using genetically modified salmon that outcompete and interbreed with wild salmon. Shrimp farms in Southeast Asia and Latin America have been blasted for the widespread destruction of mangrove forests and the pollution of coastal waters.

The two major national commissions that released ocean policies in the last two years chose different tacks; the president's bill rejects both. While the independent Pew Oceans Commission called for a moratorium on finfish aquaculture, citing the environmental concerns raised by salmon farming, the president's own U.S. Oceans Commission advocated standards to guide sustainable aquaculture development.

Hubbs-Sea World's Kent said it would be better to develop domestic sources of seafood than to keep relying on imports from countries whose laws regarding the environment and labor don't match up to ours.

"If they don't want it to happen in our own country, under our rigorous protections, that means we're passing it off to other countries like we passed off salmon farming to Chile," Kent said. "Alaska said we don't want it, and now we're buying whatever they (Chilean salmon farmers) produce."

Kent added that the institute's proposal is designed to answer the very questions critics have about aquaculture's impact on the open ocean.

"We have (proposed) a very rigorous sampling program, both near the cages and down-water, that go way beyond the EPA requirements," Kent said. "There was a lot of concern when we built the hatchery in Carlsbad over pollution, and that we would destroy ecological diversity. None of those things are the case. You can't really tell people, 'Don't worry about that, it's not going to be a problem.' That's what research is about."

But critics say that's what standards are about, to prevent experimentation that itself may damage the environment.

The California Coastal Commission wrote a string of letters to federal agencies last spring seeking the right to review Hubbs-Sea World's proposal. Citing the institute's own environmental study, Alison Dettmer, manager of the commission's Energy and Ocean Resources Unit, wrote, "(T)he potential exists for disease transfer … between cultured and wild fish. It is also reasonable to expect that some fish will escape from the pens over the life of the project. The question on this point is not if but when."

Big waves, big risk

Indeed, a key difference between coastal and offshore aquaculture is the latter's exposure to the turbulent high seas. Dr. Michael Skladany, a Minneapolis-based sociologist with 25 years of aquaculture and fisheries research, said, "Overcoming the exposed high-energy environment, that's all fantasy. That ocean is rough out there, man, and it can destroy those cages, no problem."

The oil companies' involvement makes proposals like Hubbs-Sea World's draw even more skepticism. The institute is receiving millions of dollars from Chevron to conduct its operation, including the donation of its facilities to conduct the aquaculture experiments. Kent and Michael Rubino, NOAA Fisheries' head of aquaculture programs, both said the aquaculture research would not be able to extend the life of the oil platform or absolve Chevron from its decommissioning obligations. But critics still see an all-too-convenient connection.

"A platform that was supposed to be up there for a temporary time, with the oil company obligated to remove it and clean up the seabed once the wells outlive their life expectancy, now they say its life has been extended and they can just leave it in place," said Grader, the fishermen's association head. "They're basically thumbing their nose at their obligations to remove those rigs."

For now, the only things swimming around Platform Grace, towering 150 feet above the Pacific Ocean with a priceless view of the Santa Barbara coast, are controversy and wild fish.

Contact staff writer Denis Devine at (760) 740-5415 or ddevine@nctimes.com.