As the aquaculture industry’s share of total seafood production continues to grow, its need for feed ingredients grows along with it.
According to Pew Charitable Trusts Ecosystem and Conservation Team Director Andrew Clayton, the global aquaculture industry’s need of feed ingredients is a key reason why it should be taking a more active role in the sustainability of the world’s pelagic fisheries.
Clayton, speaking during a conference session at the 2025 Seafood Expo Global – which ran from 6 to 8 May in Barcelona, Spain – said the aquaculture industry should provide additional input as some of the world’s pelagic fisheries grapple with sustainability crises.
“Aquaculture, in large part, depends on inputs from wild catch,” Clayton said. “So, those parts of the aquaculture supply that depend on feed are depending on around 17 million metric tons [MT] a year from wild fish catches to produce fishmeal and fish oil.”
The majority of fishmeal production comes from whole fish reduction – which consists mainly of catching small pelagic fish that are reduced into fishmeal and fish oil products. The fisheries for these species vary across the world, with one of the largest sources of fishmeal and fish oil coming from Peru’s anchoveta fishery, which accounts for 7.2 percent of all wild catches globally.
“We expect these trends to continue; the growth of aquaculture to meet demand for seafood products is going to continue to rely on these wild catches of mainly small pelagics,” Clayton said.
That continued reliance comes as the world’s pelagic fisheries grapple with management challenges that threaten their sustainability – and thus their supply for the aquaculture industry – as well as the sustainability of the many species that rely on them for food. Clayton pointed out that pelagic species tend to occupy an important part of the food chain and are often the species that convert plankton into fish biomass and are. in turn, eaten by other fish.
“They’re hugely important. Managers, when they’re managing these pelagic fisheries, have a number of things in mind – the importance of these fisheries for local fishers and for local food security; the importance of these species as food for the predators in these ecosystems; and the importance of these small fish as food for other commercial fish,” Clayton said. “So, managers for these fisheries have a really critical role in managing these fish that underpin those ecosystems.”
Despite that highly critical role, there are clear signs of managers failing to address those needs when considering catch volumes, even in fisheries that have a wealth of scientific knowledge. Clayton said the current state of pelagic fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic is a great example of managers failing to adequately address the challenges – which could have serious consequences for both fisheries and the aquaculture industry that relies on them.
Northeast Atlantic pelagic stocks have been approaching a crisis point for several years as overfishing over the past decade pushes the stock into decline. That overfishing has been due to a lack of agreement between coastal states, resulting in unilateral quotas exceeding the recommended total allowable catch for multiple pelagic species – including blue whiting and Atlantic mackerel.
“The collective managers of the Northeast Atlantic – for large-scale pelagic fisheries – are really sending a message to the rest of the world about how not to do this,” Clayton said.
Clayton said there’s been “palpable anger” over the lack of ability to manage fisheries well and the aquaculture industry should make sure to take a role in fixing that lack of management.
“If these relatively well-resourced parties, with good science, can’t manage these fisheries, it really bodes badly for the businesses that rely on these inputs to produce fishmeal and fish oil for aquaculture feeds,” Clayton said.
Clayton said another example of political wrangling over fisheries is the continued decision by the United Kingdom to cancel sandeel fishing, which it extended again last year. The European Union disagreed with that decision, leading to a dispute between the E.U. and U.K. – the first of its kind post-Brexit.
“Of all the big geopolitical issues between the U.K. and E.U. that were hashed out over the five years agreeing to a trade deal, and since Brexit happened, the first official dispute that dragged those parties to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague was over the impact of sandeel fisheries on seabirds,” Clayton said.
The Hague ultimately sided with the U.K., allowing the country to keep its sandeel fishery closed. Clayton said the sandeel closure is also an example of how managers are increasingly considering a fishery's role in the wider ecosystem. That fishery was ultimately closed due to its prominence in the food chain, and the Hague’s decision is a “paradigm shift.”
“It highlights how the management thinking is evolving and how there’s going to be a new paradigm where managers also need to take into account the impact in those ecosystems of how they’re managing those large-scale fisheries,” Clayton said.
On the opposite end of the management spectrum, sardinella fisheries in Western Africa are frequently used as a stop-gap for supply inconsistencies from other major fisheries but frequently have little to no management structure at all.
“They’re really globally important to the whole supply chain for aquaculture and, in the case of sardinella, shows there’s basically no multilateral governance,” Clayton said. “There’s some cooperation on science, and there are domestic unilateral limits and management measures in those countries.”
Clayton said globally, there’s relatively little management standard that applies across pelagic fisheries, which are often of huge importance to the aquaculture industry. This is why, he explained, the aquaculture industry should take a more active role in engaging the supply chain to promote sustainability.
“This failure of managers to really [get a grip on] these governance issues is serving that supply chain poorly, and it’s in the interest of the supply chain to engage in that,” Clayton said.
