Saving Seafood

Researchers assess aquaculture’s promise and peril

March 25, 2021 — Despite aquaculture’s potential to feed a growing world population while relieving pressure on badly depleted oceans, the industry has been plagued by questions about its environmental impacts.

But over the years, the diverse industry—which ranges from massive open-ocean salmon cages to family farm freshwater tilapia ponds—has made significant strides toward sustainability, according to a new Stanford-led analysis.

The study notes, however, that in order for the global  sector to deliver on its full promise, more effective oversight measures are needed to help ensure that its environmentally sound systems are economically viable.

The findings, published March 25 in Nature, could help shape how consumers think about the seafood they buy, and inform governance strategies critical to global food and nutrition security.

“As the demand for seafood around the world continues to expand, aquaculture will keep growing,” said study lead author Rosamond Naylor, the William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). “If we don’t get it right, we risk the same  we’ve seen in land-based crop and livestock systems: nutrient pollution, excessive use of antibiotics and habitat change that threatens biodiversity.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

That Salmon on Your Plate Might Have Been a Vegetarian

March 25, 2021 — Twenty years ago, as farmed salmon and shrimp started spreading in supermarket freezers, came an influential scientific paper that warned of an environmental mess: Fish farms were gobbling up wild fish stocks, spreading disease and causing marine pollution.

This week, some of the same scientists who published that report issued a new paper concluding that fish farming, in many parts of the world, at least, is a whole lot better. The most significant improvement, they said, was that farmed fish were not being fed as much wild fish. They were being fed more plants, like soy.

In short, the paper found, farmed fish like salmon and trout had become mostly vegetarians.

Synthesizing hundreds of research papers carried out over the last 20 years across the global aquaculture industry, the latest study was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Stanford experts highlight oceans’ role in solving food insecurity

June 3, 2020 — A key to solving global hunger – which is predicted to intensify during the COVID-19 pandemic – may lie in the ocean. In fact, the ocean could produce up to 75 percent more seafood than it does today, and drive sustainable economic growth, according to Stanford’s Rosamond Naylor and Jim Leape.

Stanford Report spoke with Leape, co-director of Stanford’s Center for Ocean Solutions, and Naylor, the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, about how global food policies can better integrate “blue foods” from marine and freshwater systems, how to address gaps in current thinking, and what world leaders can do to create a healthier, more sustainable food system.

The researchers are part of a major global initiative called the Blue Food Assessment, which is the first comprehensive review of aquatic foods and their roles in the global food system. Naylor will discuss the initiative on June 3 at the Virtual Ocean Dialogues, an online gathering of business, government and public sector leaders who are invested in creating a more resilient ocean.

Read the full story at Stanford News