It is predicted that 62% of the seafood which is produced for humans to consume will come from aquaculture by 2030. As on today aquaculture contributes to 50% of the human seafood consumption.
What is Aquaculture?
When fish, algae, shellfish such as lobster and shrimp and other water organisms are bred, reared and harvested in various water environments it is known to be Aquaculture.
Since the seafood demand has gone up, the introduction of technology has made it possible to cultivate food in the open ocean and coastal marine waters. The idea behind aquaculture is to rebuild the population of endangered and threatened species via the production of seafood and other commercial products, habitat restoration and wild stocks replenishment.
A controlled process, aquaculture cultivates aquatic organisms primarily for humans to consumer. Aquaculture and agriculture are quite similar; agriculture uses plants or livestock and aquaculture is with fish. It is popularly referred to as fish farming and take place globally in any water body like rivers, freshwater ponds and coastal oceans. There are two main types of aquacultures—marine and freshwater.
Waterbase was founded in 1987 by KCT Group who are the Aquaculture pioneers in India.
How does Aquaculture work?
The method to deliver aquaculture’s farm-to-table produce varies from species to species. The common stages of production chain start in hatcheries and end at the seafood section of your grocery story. There are 4 stages of production – Hatchery, Feed mill, Farm and processor.
Each stage can differ depending on the effect it has on the environment and the safety and quality of the seafood being produced. The first step in the aquaculture production chain is known as hatchery. Here is where the fish is bred and reared and hatching of eggs in the early life stages takes place. Once the animals have reached a certain level of maturity, they are relocated to the farm. Here they grow to their harvest size by consuming feed mills’ produced feed. This is also one of the stages of aquaculture. Post this the fish is transported to a processing facility – this is where the seafood is packaged and the transported to grocery stores and food retailers from where consumers make the final purchase.
KCT group believes that quality feed is directly correlated to the growth of shrimp. Their seafood processing involves research around making high highly nutritive Feeds using quality ingredients available. These are sourced from every part of the world they hire globally renowned nutritionists ensuring good quality feed to enable various farming techniques.
Importance of Aquaculture
To satisfy the growing consumption of the ever-increasing population leading to overfishing alternate sources for seafood are imperative. For generations wild fish have been exploited leading to the decline of the ocean’s natural production of seafood for the planet. Now oceans and waterbodies cannot naturally provide for the growing demand of seafood. Here is where Aquaculture steps in to fill in the gap of seafood supply. Responsible and sustainable fish Farming is the only solution to provide future generations with healthy and environmentally friendly sea protein.
Compared to chicken and pork seafood has the highest protein content and is deemed one of the healthiest foods, making aquaculture necessary and also sustainable. Compared to other types of farming, aquaculture has the lowest feed conversion ratio and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
It is anticipated that 10 billion people will occupy the planet by 2050 increasing the demand for animal protein by over 52 percent. This increases the need for sustainable and healthy approaches to providing for the world making aquaculture super critical. To prove the world’s ever-increasing population with a sustainable feed of healthy and lean protein, aquaculture’s role is increasingly becoming important.
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