The quantity of farmed seafood we eat — versus that taken wild from our waters — is hovering yearly, making aquaculture an ever-more vital supply for a lot of diets, and a response to overfishing.In line with the UN’s Meals and Agriculture Group, almost 99 million tonnes of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) had been farmed world wide in 2023, 5 instances greater than three many years in the past.Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing world wide — however with giant disparities from species to species.
Quick-growing species:
The 2 largest sellers in the marketplace in 2023, carp and tilapia, primarily got here from freshwater farming, whereas different widely-consumed fish, like herring, got here simply from deep sea fishing Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France’s nationwide institute for ocean science and know-how, instructed AFP that fish farmers select species that develop shortly and with easy necessities, to have the ability to management the life cycle.Gross sales of essentially the most extensively farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, got here to 1.9 million tonnes in 2023, 99 per cent of which had been farmed.“We all know easy methods to management the ageing or easy methods to launch a copy cycle, by way of injecting hormones,” Laugier stated.
Asia foremost producer:
Asia is by far the largest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 per cent of the 136 million tonnes — of each animal and plant species — produced beneath artifical situations in 2023.“For carp, it comes right down to custom, it has been farmed for hundreds of years on the Asian continent,” the Ifremer researcher stated.On the different finish of the spectrum, sardines and herring are simply fished within the oceans, primarily for profitability causes as some fish develop very slowly.“It takes round two years to get an adult-sized sardine,” Laugier stated.He stated farming of some fish has not but been began as, “for a very long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible useful resource”.
Seaweed:
Little recognized within the West, seaweed however accounts for nearly a 3rd of world aquaculture manufacturing.Nearly solely from Asia, seaweed manufacturing elevated by almost 200 % in 20 years, to 38 million tonnes. It’s primarily utilized in trade, in jellies, prescription drugs and cosmetics, the knowledgeable stated.He stated seaweed additionally has the main benefit of absorbing not simply CO2 within the oceans, but in addition nitrogen and sure pollution.“And from an ecological perspective it’s higher to farm macroalgae than salmon,” Laugier stated.
