FARMED FISH FRAMES : BUSINESS RESEARCH

 

Farmed Fish turn vegetarian : And a long-term analysis finds trend away from feeding them with wild cousins.

Twenty years ago, as farmed fish salmon and shrimp started spreading in supermarket freezers, an  influential scientific paper warned of an environmental mess. Fish farms were gobbling up wild fish stocks, spreading disease and causing marine pollution.

This week some of the same scientists who published that report issued a new paper concluding that fish farming, in many parts of the world, at least, is a whole lot better. The most significant improvement, they said, is that farmed fish are not being fed as much wild fish. They are being fed more plants, like soy.

In short, the paper found, farmed fish like salmon and trout have become mostly vegetarians.

Synthesizing hundreds of research papers carried out over the last 20 years across the globe aquaculture industry, the latest study was published last Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The findings have real-world implications for nutrition, jobs and biodiversity. Aquaculture is a source of income for millions of small-scale fishers and revenue for for fish-exporting countries. It is also vital if the world's 7.8 billion people want to keep eating fish and shellfish without draining the ocean of wild fish stocks and marine biodiversity.

The new paper found promising developments, but also lingering problems. And it didn't quite inform the average fish-eater what to eat more of - or avoid.

The aquaculture industry is too diverse for broad generalizations, said Rosamond Naylor, a professor of earth systems science at Stanford University in California and the lead author of both the 2000 cautionary paper and the review published Wednesday.

''The aquaculture industry is so diverse [over 425 species framed in all sorts of freshwater, brackish water, and marine systems] that it doesn't make sense to lump them all together into a ''sustainable'' or  ''unsustainable'' category.'' Dr. Naylor said in an email. ''It has the potential to be sustainable - so how can we ensure it moves in that direction?''

Global aquaculture production has more than tripled in the last 20 years, producing 112 million metric tons in 2017, the most recent year for which statistics are cited in the paper China leads the way, producing more than half of all farmed fish and shellfish worldwide.

Outside of China, Norway and Chile are big players, producing mostly farmed Atlantic Salmon, while Egypt produces mostly Nile tilapia.

Most fish produced in Asia is consumed in Asia meaning that it serves an important source of protein there.

The study found that the production of farmed seaweed and bivalves, like oysters and clams, had greatly expanded as well. That is perhaps the most encouraging news, because neither seaweed nor bivalves need extra food to reproduce.

They filter nutrients from the water and, in turn, produce nutrition for human consumption.

The study also found that freshwater aquaculture today accounts for 75 percent of farmed fish directly consumed by humans. Its most striking finding, though, was about the changes in fish feed, especially for carnivorous fish like Salmon.

The World Students Society thanks author Somini Sengupta.