Sometime In 2013, We Will Consume More Farmed Fish Than Wild-Caught - NYT

[hatrack]

Sometime this year, we will quietly pass a milestone in human history: the majority of the fish we eat will be farm-raised rather than wild-caught.

In the last 20 years, the production of fish through aquaculture has grown exponentially, while marine fish catches have leveled off. Unless it’s an extraordinary year for marine fishing, in 2013 the lines will cross, and the majority of the fish we eat will come from aquaculture rather than oceans.

Fishing is the only part of global food production in which the tillers and the breeders of the world are not dominant, and this year, the last stronghold of the hunter-gatherers will be eclipsed, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2012 State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report.

This is not to suggest that the approximately 45 million people who fish for a living are headed to the history books sometime soon. Fishing is likely to continue to have a large work force even as overharvested wild fish stock in many parts of the world decline and the job itself remains one of the most dangerous.

EDIT

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/a-milestone-looms-for-farm-raised-fish/

[d_r]

1. I wonder if this includes shrimp

some aquaculture is very benign, like small catfish ponds. Some is terrible for the environment, like damning up wetlands and mangrove swamps to create "ponds."

[flamingdem]

2. I think we'll loose out taste wise

I've been eating Atlantic Salmon, supposedly from Scotland probably from Chile, who knows.

My particular paranoia is cesium in pacific fish. That will also push us towards farming and pollution testing.

[NoOneMan]

3. And people will lose the impetus to protect natural stocks

After all, we've cultivated the resource. This may be terrible for the environment, as the rotting corpses of fish dwindle from our shores, bring back less and less nutrients to grow our forests.