Everyone knows agriculture is a means of growing crops and rearing animals, but what about aquaculture? The principle may be the same, but the practice of farming seafood – fish, crustaceans and shellfish – is less well known but undergoing real transformation.
At the same time, it is worth noting that this isn’t some tiny niche. Aquaculture already provides over half of all the fish product that we eat in the world. (Most of us, at the very least, are familiar with salmon farming.)
Why is there a need for aquaculture alongside more traditional fishing practices? It is needed to:
- produce food for humans to eat
- help with rebuilding populations of threatened and endangered species
- help to restore ocean and freshwater habitats
- boost wild stocks of freshwater and seawater species
As things stand today there are two main methods used in fish farming: using a natural environment and using onshore tanks both small and large.
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