Aquacultural output, growing at 11 percent a year, has climbed from 13 million tons of fish produced in 1990 to 31 million tons in 1998, according to an analysis written by Lester Brown, chairman of the institute, which tracks environmental trends around the world. While meat production is concentrated in industrialized countries, about 85 percent of fish farming is in developing nations. The world's leader is China, where aquaculture began 3,000 years ago.
China accounts for more than two-thirds of world aquacultural output.
Aquaculture was once touted as a solution to both world food scarcity and the problem of overfishing of wild species. Now, environmentalists are not as enamored of it as they once were. Just because we farm fish doesn't mean fish farming is producing more protein for the world. Carnivorous fish eat far more in fish-feed, usually made from smaller fish like anchovies and herring, than they produce for the dinner table. It takes three pounds of fish to put one pound of flesh on a farmed salmon, for example.