To help supply the global demand for seafood, people are raising fish, shrimp and oysters like farmers raise cattle and chickens. Shrimp farms can be located inland, where they won't harm coastal habitat. Fish farms depend on wild fish While farmed fish and shellfish can supplement the catch of wild fish, they can t replace the variety and abundance of wild fish. Most seafood farms depend on healthy wild populations to supply eggs or young fish that the farmers raise for market. Many fish farms also depend on wild fish, like anchovies , which are ground into feed for the farmed fish.
Fish farms can provide food for the future, but only if wild fish stay abundant.
The developed world's demand for shrimp has spurred a global boom in shrimp aquaculture , with harmful effects on ocean wildlife. Valuable coastal habitats , like mangrove forests, are bulldozed and replaced with shrimp ponds. This wipes out nursery waters for juvenile fish and pollutes coastal waters with shrimp-farm runoff . Salmon farming is a messy business Most farmed salmon are raised in ocean pens, like cattle in a feed lot. So many fish concentrated in one area produce tons of manure, which pollutes the water.