The Dominance of Aquaculture over Capture Fishing

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…