A groundbreaking study suggests your farmed shrimp and salmon might have a much bigger environmental toll than previously thought. Earlier this summer

Fish farming was supposed to be sustainable. But there’s a giant catch.

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2024-10-27 16:00:02

A groundbreaking study suggests your farmed shrimp and salmon might have a much bigger environmental toll than previously thought.

Earlier this summer, the United Nations reported that humanity now consumes more fish raised in farms than taken from the ocean.

The milestone was the culmination of a decades-long growth spurt in aquaculture, or fish farming, an industry that produces more than four times as much fish today than it did 30 years ago. Fish farming’s growth was spurred primarily by government subsidies around the world, as the world’s wild fish catch peaked in the 1990s and countries sought another source of seafood.

Aquaculture has also been boosted by academic institutions, philanthropic foundations, nonprofit organizations, and the United Nations on the belief that fish farming can give overexploited oceans a break and more sustainably improve food security.

But fish farming comes with — forgive the pun — some major catches. Some of the most valuable farmed species, like salmon and trout, are carnivorous and must be fed wild-caught fish when farmed. Farmed shrimp, along with a number of omnivorous fish species, are also fed wild-caught fish. All told, some 17 million of the 91 million metric tons of wild-caught fish are diverted to the aquaculture industry annually.