as opposed to "31% of the world's grain is used to feed livestock, 58% of humans are underfed", deforestation in favour of establishing farmland, methane buildup..
I imagine aqua feedstock is comprised of castoffs from the fishing industry, similar to cat/dog food
global landings of forage fish have trended downward (Extended Data Fig. 2), reflecting full to overexploitation, and harvest restrictions (for example, in Peru) to prevent fishing above maximum sustainable yield levels.
the annual catch of forage fish used to make fishmeal and fish oil decreased from 23 Mt to 16 Mt (refs. 47,48) (Extended Data Fig. 3). Global production of fishmeal from capture fisheries and trimmings decreased over the same period from 6.6 to 4.8 Mt (ref. 17). The production of fish oil declined from around 1.5 to 1.0 Mt and has been stable around 1.0 Mt during the past decade.
So fish meal is ~3/4 made up of non-edible fish (forage fisheries) and at most 1/4 trimmings (in 2017).
Figures do seem to show that most ocean fishing is for human consumption, but 16Mt of forage fishing is still more than a single digit percentage of total ocean fishing.
About 75% of fish meal is used for farm fisheries (aquaculture), the other 25% for animal farming on land.
Thank you - it is always good to be induced to double-check my assumptions! I don’t really know much about the topic except from some shallow googling (but that still makes me more knowledgeable than most).
I totally agree land farming is mostly very damaging, but it is visible and an individual can potentially control their impact on land. The damage by ocean fisheries and aquaculture is largely invisible, and it is very difficult to control an individual’s impact when eating fish: and unobviously the impact is very heavy.
I imagine aqua feedstock is comprised of castoffs from the fishing industry, similar to cat/dog food