What aquaculture experts tell me about the world’s fastest-growing food source.

1. Nigerian catfish are bred so densely you can walk across their ponds.
2. “In an urban environment, why not use a rooftop to grow fish in a couple of recirculating ponds?”
3. China grows grass carp in quantities equal to the catch of the entire U.S. fishing fleet.
4. “Everyone’s working hard to reduce the use of fishmeal and fish oil in feed, and to fool the fish into thinking they are eating what they want.”
5. All the tilapia we eat are male, with females forced that way early in life.
6. “Many agricultural landscapes are becoming more saline and facing more seasonal inundation from the sea. There’s a big opportunity for aquaculture explicitly to be part of a planned transition that can not only recover but actually dramatically increase the value of these landscapes.”
7. Shrimp lack an immune system.
8. “In Africa, the sooner we move past small-scale aquaculture, the better. It’s a dead duck.”
9. Eight miles off Panama’s Atlantic coast, cobia destined for plates in the United States fatten up in high-tech cages.
10. The world needs to grow 30 million more tons of fish each year by 2050: “We mostly know how, but is there a will to do it?”

Photos courtesy WorldFish.