A bright future for fish farming

Abstract

It is highly unlikely that wild capture fisheries will be able to produce higher yields in future. For aquaculture the opposite is the case. No other food production sector has grown as fast over the past 20 years. Aquaculture is expected to satisfy the growing world population’s demand for fish – and at the same time protect ocean fish stocks. Hopes are pinned on farming as an alternative to over-fishing. But the use of copious amounts of feed derived from wild fish, the destruction of mangrove forests and the use of antibiotics have given fish farming a bad name. Current research and development projects, however, show that environmentally-sound aquaculture systems are possible.