Mad as a Marine Biologist

No.

Aquaculture is a great idea, but in practice can cause huge amounts of damage.

For example, shrimp is in humongous demand, and are farmed (as well as fished). For that you need brackish water. Conveniently that’s just where Mangroves are located. So the mangrove forests are cleared, and you’ve lost a whole ecosystem, and all of it’s services (coastal protection, habitat, carbon sink, nursery for commercial fish species).

Even if you farm fish in a holding tank in mid-water, as they do for salmon, the food and fish excretion that drop to the benthos stimulate mass expansions of bacterial populations that use up all the oxygen and create ‘dead zones’. And the antibiotics they use on the salmon are washed down current and affect wild populations of various species.

There’s an impact for everything you manipulate, and it’s usually unpredictable. I think the only way to quell over-fishing is to abstain. Especially if you live in a developed country, seafood is a luxury, not your daily subsidence, leave it to the people who really need that protein.

It’s all about supply and demand. To quote the anti-shark fin mantra:

When the buying stops, the killing will too.