Crops

Aquaculture is an aquatic analogue of terrestrial agriculture. In aquaculture, animals or seaweeds are cultivated under controlled, sometimes intensively managed conditions, to be eventually harvested as food for humans. Increasingly, aquaculture is being viewed as an alternative to the exploitation of wild stocks of aquatic animals and seaweeds.

The best opportunities to develop aquaculture occur in inland regions where there are many ponds and small lakes, and in protected coastal locations on the oceans. Fresh-water aquaculture is especially important in Asia, where various species of fish are cultivated in artificial ponds, especially carp (Cyprinus carpio) and tilapia (Aureochromis niloticus). In North America, various species of fish are grown in inland aquaculture in small ponds, most commonly rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri) and catfish (Ictalurus spp.).

Aquaculture is also becoming increasingly important along sheltered marine coastlines in many parts of the world. In the tropics, extensive areas of mangrove forest are being converted into shallow ponds for the cultivation of prawns (Penaeus monodon) and giant prawns (Macrobrachium rosenbergii). Negative impacts of this practice include the destruction of the mangrove forests themselves (and of other coastal environments)—already endangered by other types of coastal development—and the nonselective mass harvesting of fish and other sea life supply feed for the shrimp. In North America and Western Europe, the cultivation of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) has become an important industry in recent decades, using pens floating in shallow, coastal embayments, and sometimes in the open ocean. Research is being undertaken into the potential domestication of other marine crops, including species of fish and seaweeds that are now harvested from unmanaged ecosystems.