Agricultural Culturing or Wild Catch?

 Fish and sea products are providing a large percentage of protein of people’s diets. Wild catch and aquaculture are the present major ways to acquire the products. Environmentally, both ways rise considerations. Economists developed models analyzing the social costs of human behaviors, which are called negative externalities. Although it is very hard to evaluate them, some economic models can help to differentiate the economic costs of both to find which way is more efficient in terms of resource allocation.

As one of the earliest way for human beings to acquire nutrition, catching fish from water has been practiced for centuries. In 20th century, however, with a leap in the development of technology and a tremendous increase in global population, catching fish has never been so easy and the demand never so high. Fishing became an industrialized mass-scale industry. To control the fish population and maintain the sustainability of fish growth, many countries, such as United States and New Zealand started launching fisheries management programs to restrict the catch and the size of fish that can be landed. In the US, there are detailed regulations for fishing techniques that can be applied to avoid bycatch (catching species that are not intended to catch), for the number of fish that can be landed to avoid overfishing (every fishing boat would have fishing quota that specifies the permitted catch amount) and for the area and time of permitted fishing so that fishermen would not exploit the resources at one location. To ensure the effectiveness of the regulations, the US government has to hire inspectors to monitor fishing behaviors and specialists to set up the catch limit. Not only is it expensive, the regulations do not always work. Here is a video clip showing the illegal fishing:

Aquaculture has not been a well-known industry in the US but proves to be an efficient way of production in many other countries. Environmentalists worry about the issues like wastes coming from fish farms and the large water consumption. For fresh water aquaculture, the high density of fish cultured in small areas could generate disease problems and fish wastes that are not easy to clean up. Also, those wastes, once released to water system, could induce eutrophication that causes the oxygen depletion for organisms in water. Some fish farms base their facilities in the ocean. The facilities built to trap fish are normally in coastal areas. Environmentalists argue that the net or artificial structures can injure wild animals and influence the natural wave movements. Recently, some techniques have been introduced to aquaculture industry for being more environmentally friendly. In China, there is an old agricultural convention to raise fish in rice fields to utilize the resources at highest efficiency; fish wastes can function as organic fertilizers for rice and the water would be used for raising plants as well as act as a living environment for the fish. Modern technology incorporated this idea into large-scale aquaculture industry, and it is highly likely that future aquaculture would be more environmentally friendly and in economic terms, generate less social costs.

It is my attempt to figure out if or by how much can the shift from conventional wild catch to aquaculture reduce the negative externalities generated from fish consumption. As the population grows, not only do we need more food, but also shall we have less land and fresh water. As an industry that require large investment in both, is aquaculture really more efficient than other croplands in terms of production efficiency? It may be a better way to acquire fish, but is it a better way to acquire protein in general?