Aquaculture and the Illusion of Sustainability

It sounds like a dream honestly, fish raised in clean enclosures, seaweed absorbing carbon in the sun, and shrimp grown without trawlers or torn-up seafloors. I’ve been passionate about the health of the seas for as long as I can remember. Growing up in New Jersey close to the ocean inspired my love of all things aquatic.

It’s the ocean…made orderly.

Aquaculture, the farming of fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants, promises a gentler harvest. It’s sold to us as a solution to the depletion of wild fisheries, a new chapter in the story of food and the sea, but sometimes, the dream is a front.
Behind these beautiful and puffed up ideas is the same story we always tell: growth, profit, and harm.

The Rise of Aquaculture

Aquaculture now supplies more than 50% of the seafood we eat globally.

It’s absolutely everywhere: shrimp in your sushi roll, salmon on your dinner plate (Farmed Salmon vs. Wild: What We’re Really Eating), seaweed in your smoothie, tilapia on the cafeteria tray, you name it, it’s probably been farmed at this point in time.

These companies are going around and promising relief for overfished species. The idea is that we aren’t going out and decimating whole schools of fish, the wild ones stay wild. There’s also lower carbon footprints if you aren’t sending your fleets of boats out over and over again to find where the fish are. These companies preach about localized food systems where you can grow your favorite fish that’s normally found in Hawaii right in your own neighborhood.

Then my personal favorite: cleaner protein production. If you’ve been here before you know my husband, Zakary Edington, does bodybuilding and Pro Wrestling, so I’m all about protein in my house.

But behind all of this marketing fluff, not all aquaculture is created equal.

Fish are not chickens. They don’t thrive in tight quarters (not that chickens thrive in them either, don’t even get me started on this, it bugs me to no end). Yet for some reason, many fish farms resemble feedlots…dense, static, and highly controlled.

There are actually a ton of problems with salmon farms that they don’t want you to think about. High stocking density spreads sea lice and disease faster than it would spread in the wild. I know we don’t often think about fish viruses and lice, but it’s a real thing.

If you think about it, open-net pens leak waste and pharmaceuticals into the ocean. The fish swim and eat and live hovering over the sea floor and dumping their waste in a concentrated area. The pills and sprays farms use on the fish to control diseases float on through the pen and continue into open water. Escaped salmon breed with wild stocks, threatening genetic diversity almost everywhere there’s farming.

These fish also consume wild fish in pellet form…up to 5 lbs of wild fish for 1 lb of farmed salmon. I mean…the sustainability is sort of thrown into the garbage right away based off those numbers.

These farms are not a closed loop, they’re a siphon. In Chile, Norway, and Canada, industrial salmon farming has devastated local environments. Sea floors beneath pens become dead zones and the wild fish disappear. Still, the label says “sustainable.”

Shrimp

Shrimp farming is one of aquaculture’s most destructive sub-industries…especially in tropical regions.

First these farms need to bulldozing mangrove forests. Do you remember in school when you were younger you learned about how important those forests were? They were literally the example of why trees are so important. Now though, we’re cutting them down to grow up shrimp farms. Mangroves protect coasts from storms and absorb four times more carbon than rainforests. But recently they've been sacrificed…shrimp by shrimp…across Southeast Asia and Latin America.

There’s also just absolutely massive freshwater use. I mean, according to the Global Seafood Alliance, “Embodied freshwater use for farmed shrimp averages about 2,557 m³ per metric ton of shrimp produced.” That’s a lot of water we’re using to grow something that just grows in the wild.

Crowded ponds laced with antibiotics is the same issue that farmed salmon are having where close range and high-density growing is causing diseases to spread. Short crop cycles for farmed shrimp is causing long-term devastation.

In Bangladesh and Thailand, entire villages have been displaced by saline contamination from shrimp farms, and still, we call it eco-friendly.

Seaweed

Seaweed is often painted as the hero of aquaculture, and to be totally fair, sometimes it is.

A well-managed seaweed farm absorbs CO₂ and excess nutrients, requires no fertilizer or freshwater, and genuinely boosts marine biodiversity. Seaweed can be harvested gently, without uprooting.

But of course, industrial seaweed production can go too far as monoculture plantations reduce ecosystem resilience. Here we go again with those chemical contaminants from nearby agriculture concentrating in the ecosystem at the drop of a hat. Harvesting methods can also harm local species that use seaweed as habitat, which is rarely mentioned in their business models.

Not all seaweed is equal and not all oceans are welcoming.

Greenwashing in Aquaculture

Sustainability is trendy, and where trends go, so does manipulation.

Common greenwashing tactics including using the term “All Natural” with no verification whatsoever. Yeah, no sh*t it’s natural, everything we use came from planet Earth, which makes it “natural”. Seems like a lot of people also use the term “Ocean Raised” to describe open-net pens in polluted bays.

“Eco-Friendly” logos from industry groups with weak standards is super not helpful for anything anymore. Also, “local” labels hide the fact that the fish’s feed came from halfway across the globe.

Some certifications mean something…like ASC (Aquaculture Stewardship Council) or BAP (Best Aquaculture Practices), but even these have loopholes. Real sustainability takes transparency, traceability, and a lot more time than people are willing to put into things these days.

Why the Ocean Tastes Different Now

Not all is lost, and I don’t mean to be super doom-and-gloom here. Some farms are restoring balance a lot better than others.

Shellfish farming (mussels, oysters, clams): naturally filter water, require no feed. I go into this in more detail in this post about oysters and my love for them: Oysters: The Creatures That Clean the Sea and Feed the Soul.

Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) mimics ecosystems by growing fish, algae, and shellfish together in a way that actually is super beneficial for the environment.

On-land recirculating systems (RAS) are also out there doing a great job recycling water, reducing escape risk, and isolating disease. Kelp farming with local seed sources supports native biodiversity where you can find it.

These models don’t scale fast, so you don’t see them exploding into the market, but they do scale right. These systems are asking what the ocean needs, and not so much what it can take from it.

How to Tell the Difference as a Consumer

You don’t need to be a marine biologist to make better choices. But you do need to be curious.

Think more about the seafood you’re about to eat and where it was raised. Was it fed wild fish or plants? These ideas might seem silly, but what your food eats eventually makes its way to you, don’t forget.

Was the farm certified (and by whom)? Favor farms that rotate crops or species throughout the year or over multiple years. These guys seem to be working on the balance of everything better than others. Ask if there is an ecosystem benefit at all from that farm, or just pure extraction.

Check resources like Seafood Watch or FishChoice before you buy.

Etekcity Digital Kitchen Scale – Amazon
Perfect for weighing sustainable portions, meal prepping, or portioning responsibly sourced seafood at home.

Back to the Roots Water Garden Duo – Amazon A small aquaponics setup that lets you grow herbs while raising fish…perfect for demonstrating sustainable home aquaculture.

We crave clarity in this day and age where everything is stuffed with fillers and a bunch of chemicals. Labels like “sustainable” soothe our conscience, but if we dig deep enough, we might find shrimp that drowned a forest, or salmon that suffocated a bay, even seaweed that came at the cost of a coral reef.

There is no shame in not knowing, but there’s power in learning.

The Emotional Lives of Fish

Back to Balance (yes, I am a Libra)

Some chefs are dropping shrimp entirely from their menus, while other sushi spots are replacing tuna with tomato. I even saw one chef making sushi out of watermelon he vacuumed sealed then grilled. Totally want to try that some day. Some farmers are growing kelp and oysters on the same rope to bring back the balance of the sea. There are absolutely people out there making a difference and pushing the needle in the right direction.

This isn’t a revolution of sorts, it’s a slow reconciliation back to nature and the way things should’ve been all along.

Personally, I feel a desire to work with the sea and in honesty than without it. The truth is that food shouldn’t come at the cost of collapse.

Aquaculture isn’t evil at its core, it’s just an idea. It can heal or it can harm just like just about anything else in life. It can mimic the reef…or mock it and it can grow food…or grow an illusion.

The sea still feeds us, but it’ll only last if we remember how to feed it back.