Rethinking the Urban Environment, Part II: 'St. Peter's Fish'

From: Morningstar Fishermen (link)

'Tilapia go by many names. The moniker "St. Peter's fish" comes from the story in the Christian Bible about the apostle Peter catching a fish that carried a coin in its mouth, though the passage does not name the fish.^[3] While the name also applies to Zeus faber, a marine fish not found in the area, a few tilapia species (Sarotherodon galilaeus galilaeus and others) are found in the Sea of Galilee, where the author of the Gospel of Matthew accounts the event took place. These species have been the target of small-scale artisanal fisheries in the area for thousands of years.^[4][5] In some Asian countries including the Philippines, large tilapia go by pla-pla while the smaller types are just tilapia.^[6]

Tilapia go by many names. The moniker "St. Peter's fish" comes from the story in the Christian Bible about the apostle Peter catching a fish that carried a coin in its mouth, though the passage does not name the fish.^[3] While the name also applies to Zeus faber, a marine fish not found in the area, a few tilapia species (Sarotherodon galilaeus galilaeus and others) are found in the Sea of Galilee, where the author of the Gospel of Matthew accounts the event took place. These species have been the target of small-scale artisanal fisheries in the area for thousands of years.^[4][5] In some Asian countries including the Philippines, large tilapia go by pla-pla while the smaller types are just tilapia.^[6]'

From: Blue Ridge Aquaculture (link)

'...MARTINSVILLE, Va. — It doesn’t look like a farm. From the outside it looks like any other manufacturing building in an industrial park. Step inside, however, into the humid office area and it is obvious something different is going on.

Blue Ridge Aquaculture (BRA) in Martinsville, is the world’s largest indoor fisheries. In its 100,000-square-foot facility on less than two and a half acres of land, BRA raises more than 4 million pounds of protein every year in the form of tilapia. In contrast, using the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association statistics, less than 10,000 pounds of beef could be produced on the same acreage and not in an industrial park.

Tilapia is a valuable source of protein, and it is growing in popularity. Demand for the fish quadrupled in the four years leading to 2007 and has continued to grow. The National Marine Fisheries Service ranks tilapia as the fifth most popular seafood in the United States.

BRA uses an indoor recirculating aquaculture system to grow tilapia to 1.5 pounds at harvest, with a stocking density of 1.5 gallons of water per fish. Unlike other large-scale animal production, which may require the prophylactic use of antibiotics and growth hormones to overcome stress caused by high animal densities, the tilapia actually benefit. Being packed together makes the fish less territorial and aggressive and improves health and growth rates.

“The fish grow better that way,” said Jim Franklin III, BRA vice president. “These fish are bred for this facility. We could increase the density. The density of the fish is not an issue; it’s water condition....”

These two organizations say it (there are many more) better than I can. Fish-framing and Indoor Fish-Farming are potentially viable economic activities for urban and rural areas.

For example, this could be done in Plainfield; all that is needed is the will, gumption and ingenuity to put all the pieces together. Plainfield could husband a pilot project run by Union County College in conjunction with Plainfield High School as the beginnings of a new academic program in Aquaculture with funding to come from grants -the hard part.  Doing it this way takes some of the pressure off of having to be profitable right away, gives more time to work the kinks out (and there will be kinks) and develops a local talent pool.

Next more on Aquaculture: 'Skyscrapers in the Mist/Midst'

Tony Rucker, Dwayne Wilkins: For want of a Nail

I happen to be looking at one of the comments in Old Doc’s blog. It was a comment by Dwayne Wilkins, Tony Rucker’s campaign manager (putative?) and it got me thinking.

‘…We spend way too much time fighting over little stuff, when we really need to spend time on the big stuff…’

To my mind it is disingenuous when someone says, .‘We spend way too much time fighting over little stuff, when we really need to spend time on the big stuff…’  Every experienced business person that I know knows, it’s the little stuff that counts, it’s the little stuff that can put you out of business, it’s the little stuff can mean the difference between a profit and loss, it’s the little stuff, a blood clot, that can kill you and it’s the little stuff that can mean the difference between a happy customer and a lawsuit. It's the little stuff that is really hard.

A lot of us are old enough to remember the Challenger disaster.  It happen, as the Physicist Richard Feynman showed, because management ignored the little stuff. So don’t ever say ‘We spend way too much time fighting over little stuff, when we really need to spend time on the big stuff…’ because the little stuff can come back and bite you in the ass. The Devil is in the details.

‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.’

Let’s not let this be the fate of Plainfield.

Rethinking the Urban Environment, Part I: 'Sleeping with the Fishes'

Lack of imagination is the major impediment to the revitalization of the Urban Environment. Politicians continue to ply the same old industrial 20th Century Solutions to 21st Century Problems. Need urban development? Slap up some Condos, build some roads and run some job training programs are typical solutions that go nowhere. It seems that most communities and most people never bother to challenge themselves to come up with a holistic solution capable of creating an affordable, sustainable community which benefits everyone in the community.  Which leads me to the first part of this series? 

'Sleeping with the Fishes': 

New Jersey use to be a truck farming center supplying local produce to the major urban centers in the area, Newark, New York and Philadelphia. All that changed, with the advent of the interstate highway system and cheap oil leading, to urban sprawl replacing the farms. We now get not only our exotic food but our regular every day food from all over the country and all over the world from California, Chile, China, etc. This works well so long as food is cheap and plentiful and there is the rub. As the rest of the world rapidly industrializes and we subsidize the production of biofuels, the era of 'Cheap and Plentiful' food for Americans is coming to an end. The rest of the world wants what we got and are willing to bid the price up to get it. Fresh water is becoming a scarce resource and the oceans are quickly becoming depleted of edible fish stock. This crisis won't be going away any time soon but its solution can benefit our community. How? 

Indoor urban fish farming -OK, you can stop laughing. It turns out that if you are going to rethink the urban environment this a good place to start as a proof of concept.  'For example, using a RAS (RECIRCULATING AQUACULTURE SYSTEMS, click for details) it is 

possible to product over 100,000 pounds of fish in a 5,000 square-foot building, whereas 

20 acres of outdoor ponds would be necessary to produce an equal amount of fish with 

Traditional open pond culture...'  Ask yourself, how many 5000 square-foot buildings that are empty or underutilized do we have along the Raritan Valley RR corridor in Plainfield?

Advantages of an Indoor System

• The fish stock is protected from predators, weather changes and natural calamities
• With high control over temperature, water quality and feeding, it is possible to produce fish faster and at any time during the year
• Closed, indoor aquaculture systems are often considered as more friendly to the environment because they require less water and result to less waste. As an alternative to marine aquaculture, it doesn’t result to the pollution of coastal waters with drugs, chemicals and antibiotics
• It avoids the usual danger of fish escapes associated with traditional open net pens and cages system of fish farming in coastal waters
• It allows higher stocking densities, requiring smaller spaces and lesser management needs. As such, it can save a farm owner labor and time to manage a farm
• It allows production facilities to be near the market, saving transportation costs'

So in the future could Plainfield be 'Sleeping with the Fishes?'

To be continued…

Assemblyman Jerry Green meet Stanley Kowalski

As you can see for the picture (hmmm, what do Jerry Green and Stanley Kowalski have in common?) I was going to talk about the domesticity of Assemblyman Jerry Green and his debating tactics (logical fallacies -click here) he typically uses against his enemies and former friends. But why waste words when the picture incorporates a thousand of them.


The problem I'm having is with the Jerry Greens of the world is they are Edsels, bad objects assembled by party committees, put out for public consumption and delivered stillborn at our doorsteps to be tossed away on the garbage pile of 'it could have been done a whole lot better.' And, yet, ours is still here: still ticking, walking among us, anodes on the neck, Edsel gestated through the womb of Mary Shelly. Our village needs to rise up and drive the creature out. The question is. why haven't we?

Well, Pogo! Look in the mirror. The enemy is us.

They may have air dropped the Assemblyman in, given him 30 pieces of silver and put him to work. But we allowed him to push our town down the Via Dolorosa and now he and his cohorts are hammering in the nails. They hope that It just a matter time before they raise the cross in victory.

What is to be done (I hate that phrase)? What is to be done? Beats the hell out of me.

Just how do you get people out to vote? Make it mandatory with fines? Allow people to vote online? Let them vote at work? Anybody got any ideas? I'm always surprised when I hear people complain about the city. And then you ask them if they voted and if they voted in the primary and the answer is NO. Well then. shut up.

This Friday, 09/17/2010, Assemblyman Jerry Green has called a meeting of the Democratic City Committee. The purpose of which I suspect is to ensure that there is a large Democrat voter turnout in Plainfield because Pallone is in trouble and may lose his House seat. Can anyone tell me what Pallone has done for Plainfield? Where was he when the hospital closed? Had he, Jerry and the mayor chained themselves to the Muhlenberg hospital gates, there would be no question that they could get a massive turnout in Plainfield for November. However. at this point Assemblyman Green can't turn out crap. Even if he ate a case of prunes.


Anyhow, anyone who attends that meeting needs to ask the Assemblyman what's in it for the City of Plainfield. If the answers make sense then maybe, just maybe we, should turn out in November. Otherwise to paraphrase Ruth Brown's song 'I m not going to give it away. I'll just sit on it.'   (click here for video)