Aquaculture refers to farming the water: that is, growing fish or shrimp or other aquatic animals in a controlled space, rather than capturing them in open water. I’ve tended to think of aquaculture as an interesting sideline to standard capture-style fishing, but apparently that view is so 1995. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has published The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026, which shows that the quantity produced by aquaculture has now surpassed conventional fisheries.
Indeed, this figure has two substantial lessons. One is that the total catch from capture fisheries has not increased in the last 40 years or so, since the 1980s. I have seen this pattern described both as a good thing, because it represents better management and quotat systems to protect fisheries, and also as a bad thing, because it represent the fragility of ecosystems that have been and are being overfished. Of course, both explanations can be true, and either way, substantial future growth in output from traditional fisheries seems unlikely. But in this report, I was especially struck by the rise in aquaculture, which has had larger output than traditional fisheries since 2013.
This shift to aquaculture has been concentrated in China and other countries of Asia, although there is a smaller but noticable rise in countries of Africa as well.
You can dig into the report for details of what aquatic animals are being farmed, along with seaweed and other output like shells and and pearls. For myself, I had not previously read about the distinction between fed and non-fed aquaculture: “Non-fed aquaculture of aquatic animals refers to the cultivation of species that obtain nutrients from the surrounding environment, such as plankton and organic matter in the water, without artificial feeding. This category typically includes filter-feeding species, such as certain carps and bivalve molluscs, and is generally considered more environmentally sustainable due to its low input requirements, minimal waste generation and water filtering properties.”
it’s natural to wonder about whether aquaculture is, at least in some cases, causing environmental problems of its own. The report discusses some high-tech example, like large ponds that are constructed with solar panels overhead, which both provide power to clean and filter the water and also provide shade so the water temperature doesn’t rise too much in the heat of the day. A company that builds such a facility has a strong incentive to prevent it from becoming a source of pollution. In other cases, aquaculture refers to cage-grown fish in a water environment where the cost of waste may be imposed on others who are nearby. But broadly speaking, it seems easier to me to address environmental harms of aquaculture than the environmental harms–like species extinction–that can arise from traditional capture overfishing.
