R. A. Watson, G. Nowara, K. Hartmann, B. S. Green, S. Tracey, C. G. Carter, (2015). Nature communications

Seafood consumption; seafood production; Food security; Global Fisheries; Aquaculture
10.1038/ncomms8365,
The growing human population must be fed, but historic land-based systems struggle to meet
expanding demand. Marine production supports some of the world’s poorest people but
increasingly provides for the needs of the affluent, either directly by fishing or via fodderbased
feeds for marine and terrestrial farming. Here we show the expanding footprint of
humans to utilize global ocean productivity to feed themselves. Our results illustrate how
incrementally each year, marine foods are sourced farther from where they are consumed
and moreover, requires an increasing proportion of the ocean’s primary productivity that
underpins all marine life. Though mariculture supports increased consumption of seafood, it
continues to require feeds based on fully exploited wild stocks. Here we examine the ocean’s
ability to meet our future demands to 2100 and find that even with mariculture supplementing
near-static wild catches our growing needs are unlikely to be met without significant
changes.