People Love Fish, But Will There Be Enough? (Probably, Thanks to Aquaculture)

Overview

Paper Summary › Explain Like I'm Five › Conflicts of Interest › Identified Limitations › Rating Explanation › Good to know › Topic Hierarchy › File Information ›

Paper Summary

Paperzilla title

Global fish demand (live-weight) has grown from 93.6 to 152 million tonnes between 1998 and 2018 and is projected to nearly double again by 2050. Aquaculture has allowed greater access to fish for low-income consumers, and diverse preferences and culinary traditions drive demand for blue foods around the world. Nutritional and environmental consequences of rising demand will depend on substitution among fish groups and other animal source foods in national diets.

Explain Like I'm Five

Scientists found that people want to eat a lot more fish, and this will keep growing. We're growing more fish on farms, which helps, but we need to be smart about what fish we eat so it's good for us and the planet.

Possible Conflicts of Interest

R.L.N. is a member of the Forest Protection Advisory Panel at Cargill, and the Center on Food Security and the Environment has received funding from the Cargill Foundation for visiting scholars and staff support, but not for research. D.C.L. has received in kind and financial support from a wide range of commercial and non-commercial entities, serves as a committee member for standards organizations and is a director of a commercial tilapia hatchery in Thailand. B.C. has contributed, without direct funding, to the development of sustainability strategies of dominant companies in the seafood industry through SeaBOS. R.L.N., C.D.G., and J.A.G. are members of the scientific advisory board for Oceana.

Identified Limitations

Model without price

The model used in the study does not include prices, which are known to be a key determinant of fish demand. As income increase, the price elasticity of fish demand is generally lower than that of meat, which has important implications for substitution among different animal-source foods. Without incorporating price, the projections of future fish consumption will be biased upward.

Data limitation on fish diversity

The diversity of seafood consumed is not fully captured. It would be more helpful to investigate the consumption pattern for farmed versus wild fish species. This will be informative when projecting the impacts on both capture and aquaculture and further developing the model.

Assumption about fish supply

The model assumes that fish supply is elastic. In reality, the fish supply is not infinite. This implies that climate-driven constraints on fish supply could affect the quantity of fish production and further increase the price and thus influence consumption, especially among the poor. This important supply constraint will also affect the nutritional and environmental outcomes.

Rating Explanation

This study provides interesting insight into the projected consumption of fish to 2050 using estimates for population and income growth as well as income elasticity for different species. However, several key elements are missing from the model which are known to be important in shaping the demand. I have lowered the rating due to these limitations and existing COI.

Good to know

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Topic Hierarchy

Domain: Health Sciences

Field: Nursing

Subfield: Nutrition and Dietetics

File Information

Original Title: Blue food demand across geographic and temporal scales

Uploaded: July 14, 2025 at 10:44 AM

Privacy: Public