Farmed production of some fish – and seaweed – is soaring

Asia leads world farmed fish production (Image credit score: AFP)

The quantity of farmed seafood we eat — versus that taken wild from our waters — is soaring yearly, making aquaculture an ever-extra vital supply for a lot of diets, and a response to overfishing.According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, almost 99 million tonnes of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) had been farmed all over the world in 2023, 5 occasions greater than three many years in the past.Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing all over the world — however with massive disparities from species to species.

Fast-growing species:

The two largest sellers available on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, primarily got here from freshwater farming, whereas different extensively-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 expertise, instructed AFP that fish farmers select species that develop rapidly and with easy necessities, to have the ability to management the life cycle.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 know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones,” Laugier stated.

Asia primary producer:

Asia is by far the most important producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 per cent of the 136 million tonnes — of each animal and plant species — produced underneath artifical circumstances in 2023.“For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent,” the Ifremer researcher stated.At the opposite 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 around two years to get an adult-sized sardine,” Laugier stated.He stated farming of some fish has not but been began as, “for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource”.

Seaweed:

Little identified within the West, seaweed however accounts for nearly a 3rd of world aquaculture production.Almost solely from Asia, seaweed production elevated by almost 200 % in 20 years, to 38 million tonnes. It is primarily utilized in business, in jellies, prescribed drugs and cosmetics, the knowledgeable stated.He stated seaweed additionally has the key benefit of absorbing not simply CO2 within the oceans, but additionally nitrogen and sure pollution.“And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon,” Laugier stated.