<
https://english.elpais.com/climate/2026-08-13/aquaculture-is-depleting-the-oceans-a-farmed-salmon-can-consume-more-than-six-times-its-weight-in-wild-fish.html>
"Empty fish counters. That is what shoppers found when they arrived at Madrid’s
Mercado de la Paz last September. The stock had not sold out. Instead, they
were looking at an advertising campaign organized by Apromar, Spain’s
aquaculture industry association, which wanted people to imagine a country
without farmed fish.
“Seafood could become a luxury affordable only to a few,” the ads warned,
before adding: “The real fortune is living in a country where aquaculture
exists and guarantees fish for everyone.”
The message was straightforward: consumers want more fish, wild fish stocks are
being harvested to their limits, and fish farming is the way to meet growing
demand while preventing the collapse of the oceans. This same logic, producing
more to catch less, drives a global aquaculture industry worth €270 billion
($311 billion), the fastest-growing food sector in the world. Today, half of
all seafood products come from aquaculture, and Spain is the European Union’s
largest producer by volume.
There is, however, a problem. “The industry’s sales pitch is incorrect,” says
Daniel Pauly, director of the Sea Around Us project at the University of
British Columbia.
The most popular farmed seafood products in Spain and other countries,
including salmon, shrimp, trout, sea bass and sea bream, are fed with the very
same wild fish species that aquaculture claims to be saving, thereby
accelerating ocean depletion. Two-thirds of global aquaculture raises species
that are fed fishmeal and fish oil, ingredients made by cooking and grinding
fish caught in the wild. Before reaching the market, a farmed salmon may
consume, in some operations, more than six times its own weight in wild fish.
An investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a Washington, D.C.-based
journalism organization, uncovered a range of impacts linked to the industry,
including the loss of jobs in small-scale fisheries, chronic exposure to
chemicals, preventable workplace deaths and violent protests, mostly triggered
by the unbearable stench of fishmeal plants. The investigation concluded that
these social and environmental costs fall largely on poorer countries where the
raw material is caught and processed, far from the places where the seafood
products are consumed."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
