Aquaculture will provide 60 percent of all fish production by 2020, according to new research conducted for Worldwatch’s Vital Signs Online service.
The industry been growing steadily for the past 25 years, and it looks like we’ll need it to continue growing to accommodate our growing population and taste for seafood: human fish consumption has increased 14.4 percent over the last five years, with consumption of farmed fish growing tenfold since 1970.
While aquaculture may be a way to keep up with increasing demand for fish, it can be implicated in a number of potential problems, such as destruction of land and marine habitats, chemical pollution from fertilisers and antibiotics, lessened fish resistance due to close proximity and intensive farming practices and depletion of wild fish stocks, the report says.
