Trump v. Ocean Life

The U.S. Senate rarely throws a bone to the nonhuman world, but right now there’s a bill that deserves more than a nod — it deserves a rally. The Keep Finfish Free Act isn’t just a speed bump for fish farming corporations. It’s a direct challenge to the systemic exploitation of marine life and the industrialisation of the ocean.

Co-sponsored by Senators Cory Booker and Dan Sullivan, this bill would stop the federal government from rubber-stamping industrial fish farms in U.S. coastal waters. Instead, it would force any such project to pass through Congress — a slower, harder process that could stall or stop the expansion of aquaculture in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). And that’s exactly what we need.

Because what the aquaculture industry wants is clear: total control. Their goal is to turn the ocean into a floating feedlot. And if we let them, they will.

Factory Farms in the Sea

Let’s drop the illusion that fish farming is anything but a watery extension of land-based animal agriculture. The conditions are disturbingly similar: mass confinement, poor health, extreme stress, a complete denial of natural behaviour. This isn’t “sustainable seafood.” It’s captivity, exploitation, and death — scaled up, sanitised, and sold as a climate solution.

In fact, if you replaced the word “fish” with “pigs” or “chickens,” most people would see these farms for what they are: morally bankrupt. But because fish don’t scream like mammals or gaze back like dogs, they’re still treated as disposable units of protein.

That convenience — emotional detachment — is exactly what the industry banks on.

The Disease Problem

Pack hundreds of thousands of animals into a confined space with limited movement and poor hygiene and you’ll get disease outbreaks. It happens in pig barns, it happens in battery cages, and it happens underwater.

Fish farms are hotspots for pathogens and parasites. What’s worse, these don’t stay contained. Water flows freely between cages and open seas, carrying diseases to wild populations and decimating ecosystems. The industry likes to pretend fish farming protects wild fish — but it’s actively harming them.

And when fish get sick, there’s a predictable fix: antibiotics. Lots of them.

This isn’t just bad for fish. It’s bad for everyone.

A Breeding Ground for Resistance

The overuse of antibiotics in fish farms is accelerating antimicrobial resistance. Bacteria are learning to survive the drugs meant to kill them, and that spells disaster. One million people die every year from drug-resistant infections (the author of this articles grandmother died of one). Industrial aquaculture is helping to drive that figure up.

Then there’s the chemical warfare on parasites like sea lice. Pesticides are dumped into the water, killing lice — until they don’t. Just like insects on land, parasites in fish farms are developing resistance. That means more chemicals, stronger doses, more collateral damage. All for the sake of keeping sick fish alive long enough to slaughter and sell them.

It’s not a solution. It’s a cycle. One that feeds off suffering.

Feeding Farmed Fish Means Killing Wild Fish

Here’s a little-known horror: the majority of farmed fish — like salmon and trout — are carnivores. They don’t eat plants. They eat other fish.

So where do their meals come from? The ocean. Wild fishes are caught in massive quantities, ground into fishmeal and fish oil, and fed to their captive counterparts. The industry calls this “efficient.” It’s anything but.

It takes up to 6.24 pounds of wild fish to produce just one pound of farmed salmon. That’s a net loss of protein. That’s ecological looting. And it’s not a byproduct — it’s deliberate slaughter.

Worse still, the industry inflates its sustainability credentials by labelling these wild-caught animals as “trimmings” or “byproducts.” But many of these fishes are whole, healthy, and very much targeted. The lie is slick, but the blood is real.

A Land Grab Disguised as Progress

When cornered on their oceanic destruction, aquaculture proponents pivot: “We’re moving toward land-based feed.” Great. Now instead of stripping oceans, we’re bulldozing forests and draining rivers.

Between 1997 and 2017, the use of terrestrial crops in aquaculture feeds increased by 468%. The industry has shifted its burden from sea to land, piling on pressure to already collapsing ecosystems. 

Farming herbivorous fish like tilapia doesn’t solve the problem either. It simply swaps wild fishmeal for soy monocultures, freshwater depletion, and pesticide-laced agriculture. Exploitation doesn’t disappear — it changes costume.

Stress, Suffering, and Sentience

Industrial fish farming isn’t just a numbers game. It’s a moral failure.

Fishes are not floating vegetables. They are sentient. They feel pain. They experience fear. They remember, navigate, socialise, and, under stress, suffer from conditions akin to depression. Yet they are denied the most basic freedoms: space, stimulation, autonomy.

Every tank, every cage, every pen is a prison. The term “farmed fish” already strips them of individuality — they are property, inventory, units to grow and kill. Their lives are measured not by experiences, but by weight and market value.

This isn’t just about pollution or overfishing. It’s about justice. And justice doesn't begin when a fish becomes a human concern — it begins when a fish exists.

The Corporate Grab for the Ocean

Trump’s push to loosen federal restrictions and allow commercial aquaculture in protected waters wasn’t about food security. It was about control.

Corporations want federal waters — the so-called “exclusive economic zone” — to be exclusive to them. If they succeed, public ocean space becomes private profit space. And fishes become test subjects in a cruel experiment that’s been failing for decades.

The 2021 permit that allowed industrial fish farms was struck down as unlawful for good reason. It overstepped authority. It ignored environmental consequences. It erased any notion of precaution. The Keep Finfish Free Act would stop this kind of fast-tracking in its tracks.

A Bill That Actually Draws a Line

This bill doesn’t ban fish farming outright. But it does make it harder. That’s the point.

It forces transparency. It slows expansion. It demands accountability. And it sends a signal that the ocean isn’t open for business-as-usual exploitation.

It’s not perfect — but it’s a start. And in a political landscape that rarely considers animals at all, let alone marine ones, that matters.

Because aquaculture isn’t “the future of food.” It’s the past, repackaged — industrial-scale breeding, confinement, mutilation, and commodification of lives we barely understand.

And let’s be clear: this isn’t about “improving welfare standards” or “certified humane” labels. 

You can’t reform injustice. 

You abolish it.