AQUACULTURE: THE CULTIVATION OF AQUATIC PLANTS AND ANIMALSFOR FOOD. (Farming in the water!!!!)
Inland and marine aquaculture production has been growing at anunprecedented rate.
With global population set to expand the proportion of fish sourced from fishfarms is set to increase dramatically.
In 2008 fish continued to be the most-trade food commodity (UN) worth £63bn.
In 2011 a UN report showed that most stocks of the top 10 commercial specieswere fully exploited and a threat to the long-term sustainability of global fishstocks.
In the Bering Sea during the 1980s stocks of Pollack had reached a sustainabletwo million tonnes. But the emergence of industrial scale fishing fleets fromChina, Japan, Poland and Korea lead to the complete collapse of the resource.
In December 2009, the U.S. closed nearly the entire U.S. Arctic Ocean to anyfurther commercial fishing in an attempt to maintain the health of the ecosystemand the people who depend on it.