Mariculture in the WIO region

Today aquatic products provide nearly 3 billion people with at least 15% of their animal protein intake and fish constitute the dominant source of animal protein in many island states and low income, food deficient countries (FAO, 2009; Smith et al., 2010). The world’s growing population consumes more and more fish and stagnating catches from our oceans cannot keep up (Pauly et al., 2003; FAO 2009). The rapid development of aquaculture has to some extent enabled us to meet this growing demand and currently the aquaculture sector provides half of all fish destined for human consumption (FAO, 2009). However, the gap between demand and supply is increasing and so the pressure on aquaculture to meet this shortfall has led to development of the sector rising up political agendas worldwide. The aquaculture industry is the fastest growing animal production sector but the question is whether it can double in a sustainable manner (Soto et al., 2008; Tacon & Metain, 2008) by 2020 to meet expected demand for fish products (Jacquet et al., 2009). Another interesting question is what role Africa will play in future development of aquaculture, in particular to what extent can the expansion of marine aquaculture offer alternative or supplementary livelihoods to fishery dependent communities?

Keywords

Mariculture, WIO region, Challenges, Prospects

Citation

Troell, M., Hecht, T., Beveridge, M., Stead, S., Bryceson, I., Kautsky, N., Mmochi, A., Ollevier, F. (eds.) (2011) Mariculture in the WIO region - Challenges and Prospects. WIOMSA Book Series No. 11. viii + 59pp. Cover

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11810/1902

Collections

Institute of Marine Sciences

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