Esmare weideman biography of nancy

Aqua Culture or Fish Farming has become the new buzz word in the international Big Bucks arena. Although the practice of farming with fish is eons old, dating back to ancient Egypt and China, the ballgame has changed completely in the last decades from small-scale, home-grown fish for the table to a multi-billion dollar industry. 

Suddenly every country in the world - from Alaska and America to Norway and Nigeria - is concerned about the world's health and dwindling food supply. Farmed fish is the new "craze and solution" and is lauded by players in the industry as the only future source of protein for mankind - apparently because the world's oceans have already been stripped by commercial fishing and pirating longliners (that, funnily enough, nobody is able to catch or stop?)

The competitive mega-bucks industry is spreading and flourishing like wildfire as new technology for improved sea cages flood the market and companies compete to produce the best/cheapest and most balanced/nutritious artificial fish pellets and food for the various farmed fish species.  

South Africa is a relative new-comer to the industry and has only in the last two decades decided to jump on the bandwagon with a few pilot projects, but it is still very experimental and small-scaled compared to the lucrative industries in some Eastern countries, Europe and America.

Since the Mossel Bay area has recently been earmarked for a pilot offshore finfish project to farm yellowtail in open cages, it might be a good idea to see what is truly going on in the industry; and why consumers are seriously cautioned to only buy/eat farmed fish and seafood products from certain accredited outlets to ensure it is safe and responsibly grown.



Photo: Fish farming in Bangladesh

It seems the industry is still in a very experimental phase regarding

Be careful what you Tweet for

Journalists often have a disclaimer on their Twitter profiles stating that their opinions are “their own” and that retweets are not “endorsements”. It must be emphasised that disclaimers are not worth the paper they are written on (or in Twitter lingo: not worth the character spaces they take up).

Let’s be clear: If you defame someone with a tweet, you may be held liable. If you retweet defamatory content, you may be held liable. If you harm the reputation of your employer, your “personal own opinion” (sic) will get you fired, even if it is an honestly held, valid opinion. If you are strongly associated with your media house, you should be extra diligent.

In a recent ruling by the Press Ombud, this thorny issue was fleshed out for the first time. The Office of the Presidency complained about an article in the Mail&Guardian: ‘Zuma pals score first nuke deal – When debate still rages about the nuclear build programme, a tender has already been awarded to a close family friend of the president’.

Presidential spokesperson Bongani Ngqulunga had success in his complaint that President Zuma’s reputation was unfairly tarnished through the use of his name and picture of the front page headline and picture (more on this issue in a next newsletter), but a fascinating aspect of the complaint was the inclusion of the tweet of then Editor Verashni Pillay in the complaint.

In a bid to entice the public in a 140 character tweet to read her publication’s scoop, Pillay tweeted: ‘You won’t believe what Zuma and his pals are up to next.’

Pillay conceded that the article made ‘no suggestion in the article that the President was linked to the contract in question or that the contract was awarded because of the link between Mr Vivian Reddy and the President’.

In her defence, she also said that tweets by editors are not regulated by the Press OmbudR