14 DAY TRIAL // Once upon a time, aquaculture was not one of the well-developed branches of food production. It fact, its contribution to the total amount of fish the world's population consumed was negligible. This is no longer the case today. A new report from an international group of scientists comes to show that more than half of the fish eaten around the world today comes from a farm. But there is also a downside to this trend: a large portion of the marine food that would otherwise feed natural ecosystems is being harvested as a source of nutrients for the farmed fish.
In the new paper, published in the September 7th online edition of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the authors identify an increased demand as one of the largest contributors to the current trend. “Aquaculture is set to reach a landmark in 2009, supplying half of the total fish and shellfish for human consumption,” they say. In just 12 years, between 1995 and 2007, the amount of fish produced by these farms more than tripled, which is a massive increase by any standards.
“The huge expansion is being driven by demand. As long as we are a health-conscious population trying to get our most healthy oils from fish, we are going to be demanding more of aquaculture and putting a lot of pressure on marine fisheries to meet that need,” Stanford University Professor of Environmental Earth System Science Rosamond L. Naylor, the lead author of the new paper, adds. He is also the director of the Stanford Program on Food Security and the Environment. The expert believes that an increased demand for long-chain, omega-3 fatty acids is among the most important drivers of aquaculture expansion.
The health effects of these acids, which can be found in oily fish such as salmon, have long been advertised by healthcare experts, and people are beginning to buy more and more fish. Omega-3 fatty acids have the ability to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, reports from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) say. “With the production of farmed fish eclipsing that of wild fish, another major transition is also underway: Aquaculture's share of global fishmeal and fish oil consumption more than doubled over the past decade to 68 percent and 88 percent, respectively,” the authors add.