Aquaculture Over-Optimism

The recent rapid growth in aquaculture production reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has resulted in what we denote here as aquaculture over-optimism. An extreme form of which is the notion that we need not worry about depleting wild fish because we can meet the global need for seafood through farming. Here we investigate, whether the recent growth in aquaculture production can be maintained and compare aquaculture production projections with the future need for fish to find out whether aquaculture optimism is justified. We find that aquaculture growth rates in all the cases studied have already reached their peak and have begun declining. Also, our results suggest that for aquaculture alone to supply the projected total global fish demand between 2025 and 2030, it would have to grow by between 11% and 19% per year, rates that are outside the range that been possible to date.