This month, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) announced that for the first time ever, the amount of aquatic animals collected through farming surpassed the amount fished in the wild.
The FAO found that in 2022 — the latest year for which data is available — over 94 million tons of fish, shellfish, shrimp and other marine animals were produced through aquatic farming. This compared to just 91 million tons being farmed in the wild. In 2021, both aquaculture and wild farming had brought in approximately 91.1 million tons.
Asia is home to more than 90% of aquaculture production, according to the FAO, and 90% of all harvested fish — whether fished in farms or the wild — go towards human consumption, with the remainder going to products such as animal feeds or fish oils. Around three billion people currently rely on seafood as their main source of protein around the world.
20kg of seafood is consumed per capita around the world, double the amount in 1960.
Peruvian anchovies, skipjack tuna and Alaskan pollock are the most common aquatic animals fished in the wild, while carp, oysters, clams, tilapia and prawns are the most commonly farmed.
Manuel Barange, the head of the FAO’s aquaculture division, said that fish farming has grown alongside public recognition of the benefits of aquatic animal food — micronutrients such as Omega 3 and less negative environmental impact than land-animal farming.
Fishing as an industry is also a gigantic source of employment. One in every 13 people on earth, or 600 million people, depend at least partially on the sector for their livelihoods. Just under 60 million of those work directly in the aquaculture industry.
Still, consuming fish from any source can have negative environmental consequences, from high carbon emissions to overfishing, from slaughtered bycatch to antibiotic pollution. The FAO estimates that of the whole stock of seafood in 2019, only 65% was operating at a biologically sustainable level.
As more and more people look to consume a more environmentally friendly diet, seafood options can at times look bleak. All it takes is one viewing of Netflix’s “Seaspiracy” for the environment-conscious consumer to be put off forever.
However, as fish products come from a variety of sources, all with varying degrees of sustainable practices, some experts argue there is room for fish in an environmentally friendly diet.
“The category of seafood is really diverse. “It includes around 2,500 different species produced by farming and capture fisheries. We’re really talking about very different production systems there,” says Jessica Gephart, assistant professor in environmental science at the American University in Washington DC.
Selection of fish products through the lens of sustainability can be tricky. “With meat, it’s a bit easier: you go into the supermarket and you want to buy a chicken and you’re faced with maybe three options,” says Jack Clarke, sustainable seafood advocate at the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), a UK-based non-profit. “Seafood is a lot more complicated. There’s a lot of variables in there. So you’ve got wild, farmed, a dozen different species caught in hundreds of different places with different ways of catching them and farming them.”
Tools such as MCS’s Good Fish Guide or the US equivalent, Seafood Watch from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, can be very useful guides for consumers to see how sustainably sourced their seafood is.
“I think it’s helpful to look at the guides to understand the nuance,” says Sarah Poon, the associate vice president of the Fishery Solution Center at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). “[They] have looked at not just the species, but where the species come from: what might be a good choice in one place could actually be not a great choice in another place.”
Many still doubt these guides as they rely on heavily criticised ratings and audits by organisations such as MCS. Clarke argues they should still be taken into account. “[The Marine Stewardship Council blue tick] means at least they are being audited, and they have to prove things. It’s a great way of just quickly and easily identifying whether something’s a sustainable choice.”
Clearly there is still value in these tags. In 2016 a study of DNA identification of seafood found that 30% of products globally had some form of misdescription. This means that those products were not the species that was being stated in the marketing of the product. On the other hand, a 2019 DNA study by MCS found that products labelled with its sustainability mark were labelled accurately 99% of the time.
The method in which the fish is farmed is also a key indicator of how sustainable the product is. For example: trawling. Trawling is a method of catching wild fish which involves dragging nets along the seafloor bottom, damaging seafloor habitats. The WWF found in 2022 that 92% of discarded fish in EU fisheries were linked to trawling. Trawling also leads to more greenhouse gas emissions and even brings up more carbon from the seabed.
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Instead, experts argue in favour of line-caught fish, which is not only better for the environment, but also for the fish themselves. “If you’re worried about things like dolphins and shark bycatch, bycatch in pole and line fisheries is minimal,” says Jack Clarke.
Still, there is much work to be done for the seafood industry as a whole to become fully sustainable. Overfishing and climate change threaten to completely destroy the natural habitat of many marine animals. Take the legendary sardine run in southeastern Africa, essential to the ecological system of the area, which is due to potentially end within the next ten years as a consequence of these various factors.
It is clear that much work has been done to improve the environmental impact of the agriculture industry, mostly focused on land agriculture, with the implementation of regenerative practices. Seafood production is not slowing down anytime soon, set to rise to 202 million tonnes by 2030 — a 13% increase compared to just 2020 levels. As the industry continues to grow, more advancement in sustainable fishing practices and more awareness among consumers are desperately needed.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by Impakter.com columnists are their own, not those of Impakter.com –In the Cover Photo: Aerial view of a fish farm in Scotland, August 13, 2021. Cover Photo Credit: Bob Brewer.
