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Aquaculture will continue to depend more on land than sea

Nature volume 603, pages E2–E4 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 19 August 2020

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arising from C. Costello et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2616-y (2020)

Costello et al. 3 overestimate current mariculture production and future production potential, and underestimate freshwater aquaculture production and potential in six ways by: (1) defining brackishwater aquaculture as part of mariculture; (2) excluding crustaceans from their model; (3) conflating freshwater capture fisheries and freshwater aquaculture production; (4) making projections of marine bivalve production that are inconsistent with historical trends; (5) making over-optimistic assumptions about marine finfish farming technologies; and (6) not accounting for high potential to raise freshwater aquaculture yields through intensification (see Supplementary Information, section 1 for full details).

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Fig. 1: Aquaculture and capture fisheries production, and publications related to aquaculture policy.
Fig. 2: Production, price, natural trophic level and the correlation between trophic level and price of the top 20 brackishwater, marine and freshwater finfish species.

Data availability

Secondary data were obtained from several sources: FAO statistics (www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/software/fishstatj/en), Fishbase (www.fishbase.org) and Web of Science (www.webofscience.com/). All data analysed in this study are either included in the Supplementary Information or available on GitHub (https://github.com/AquacultureFuture/LandAndSea).

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Acknowledgements

W.Z. was supported by the iFISH Program from China Blue Sustainability Institute. B.B. and P.J.G.H. were supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH) led by WorldFish; P.J.G.H. was supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) supported by contributors to the CGIAR Trust Fund. P.J.G.H. and M.T. acknowledge the Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation for supporting this work through the Beijer Institute’s Aquaculture and Sustainable Seafood Programme, and the SEAWIN Project funded by FORMAS (2016-00227). P.J.G.H. was partially funded by FORMAS Inequality and the Biosphere Project (2020-00454). D.C.L. and R.N. were funded by the European Union’s HORIZON 2020 Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 773330 (GAIN).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Demonstration Center for Experimental Fisheries Science Education, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Aquaculture, Centre for Research on Environmental Ecology and Fish Nutrition of the Ministry of Agriculture, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, China

    Wenbo Zhang

  2. Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Ben Belton

  3. WorldFish, Jalan Batu Maung, Penang, Malaysia

    Ben Belton & Patrik J. G. Henriksson

  4. School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Khlong Luang, Pathum Thani, Thailand

    Peter Edwards

  5. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Patrik J. G. Henriksson & Max Troell

  6. Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, The Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm, Sweden

    Patrik J. G. Henriksson & Max Troell

  7. Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

    David C. Little & Richard Newton

Authors
  1. Wenbo Zhang
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  2. Ben Belton
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  3. Peter Edwards
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  4. Patrik J. G. Henriksson
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  5. David C. Little
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  6. Richard Newton
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  7. Max Troell
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Contributions

W.Z., B.B., P.E., P.J.G.H., D.C.L., R.N. and M.T. conceived the idea and designed the study. W.Z., B.B. and P.J.G.H. collected and analysed the data. W.Z., B.B., P.E., P.J.G.H., D.C.L., R.N. and M.T. wrote the paper. W.Z. is lead author. All other co-authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically by surname.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wenbo Zhang.

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Competing interests

W.Z. is a member of the BAP Committee on Climate Action. He has no affiliation with any for-profit company. B.B. has no competing interests. P.E. is an Emeritus Professor with no commercial interests. P.J.G.H. is a member of the BAP Committee on Climate Action and scientific advisor for SeaBOS. D.C.L. has received in-kind and financial support from a wide range of commercial and non-commercial entities, serves as a committee member for standards organizations and is a director of a commercial tilapia hatchery in Thailand. R.N. is the chair of the BAP committee on climate action. M.T. is a member of the program committee for the Marine and Coastal Science for Management (WIOMSA/MASMA), member of Action Areas and Solution Clusters Working Groups—Blue foods, United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards (UNFSS), scientific lead for SeaBOS, and a review editor for Aquaculture Environment Interactions.

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Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Information, including Supplementary Figs. 1–12, Tables 1–3 and references.

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Zhang, W., Belton, B., Edwards, P. et al. Aquaculture will continue to depend more on land than sea. Nature 603, E2–E4 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04331-3

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