Seafood Farming (i.e., Aquaculture)

• Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and aquatic plants.
• Aquaculture accounts for 1/2 the fish consumed on the planet and It is set to overtake capture fisheries as a source of food fish.
• The report World Aquaculture 2010 found that global production of fish from aquaculture grew more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2008, from 32.4 million tons to 52.5 million tons. It also forecasts that by 2012 more than 50 percent of the world's food fish consumption will come from aquaculture.
• Aquaculture continues to be the fastest growing animal food-producing sector and to outpace population growth, with per capita supply from aquaculture increasing from 0.7 kg in 1970 to 7.8 kg in 2006, an average annual growth rate of 6.9 percent.
• From a production of less than 1 million tonnes per year in the early 1950s, production in 2006 was reported to be 51.7 million tonnes with a value of US$78.8 billion, representing an annual growth rate of nearly 7 percent.
• In 2006, more than 110 million tonnes (77 percent) of world fish production was used for direct human consumption. Almost all of the remaining 33 million tonnes was destined for non-food products, in particular the manufacture of fishmeal and fish oil.
• Accounting for more than 10 million tonnes in 2006, inland fisheries contributed 11 percent of global capture fisheries production
• World aquaculture is heavily dominated by the Asia–Pacific region, which accounts for 89 percent of production in terms of quantity and 77 percent in terms of value, with China alone contributing 62.3 percent- Of the 15 leading aquaculture-producing countries, 11 are in the Asia-Pacific region.
• Few countries lead the production of some major species, such as China with carps; China, Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia and India with shrimps and prawns; and Norway and Chile with salmon
• In the last three decades, employment in the primary fisheries and aquaculture sector has grown faster than the world’s population and employment in traditional agriculture.
• An overall review of the state of marine fishery resources confirms that the proportions of overexploited, depleted and recovering stocks have remained relatively stable in the last 10–15 years, after the noticeable increasing trends observed in the 1970s and 1980s with the expansion of fishing effort.

Processing

• Fifty-four percent (77 million tonnes) of the world’s fish production underwent some form of processing.
• Seventy-four percent (57 million tonnes) of this processed fish was used for manufacturing products for direct human consumption in frozen, cured and prepared or preserved form, and the rest for non-food uses.
• Freezing is the main method of processing fish for food use, accounting for 50 percent of total processed fish for human consumption in 2006, followed by prepared and preserved (29 percent) and cured fish (21 percent)