Initial Publication Date: August 12, 2008

And On His Farm He Had Some Fish

Part A: Aquaculture Around the World

Channel catfish, the top aquaculture species in the United States. Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Some popular seafood, such as salmon and shrimp, are farm raised, in addition to being fished in the wild. Other popular seafood items, such as tilapia, catfish and mussels, are almost always produced by aquaculture methods. Globally, half of the world's seafood is farmed. The United States currently ranks seventeenth in the world in aquaculture, producing approximately 284,000 metric tons of seafood per year, worth almost $1.5 billion.

  1. Open the file 2017 U.S. Aquaculture Production (Excel 2007 (.xlsx) 10kB Jul29 20) in Excel or a similar spreadsheet program. Examine the data table.
  2. Create a pie chart to visually examine how much each species contributed to the total U.S. aquaculture production in 2017. 

    Checking In

    Answer the following questions to check your understanding of the information provided in the 2017 U.S. Aquaculture Production spreadsheet.

  3. Of the nearly 2.4 million metric tons of seafood consumed in the U.S. in 2016, about half of the imported seafood is from aquaculture. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) provides a comprehensive global view of capture fisheries and aquaculture. Examine the chart below showing 2016 aquaculture production by world region. 




    Checking In

    Answer the following questions to check your understanding of the information provided in the pie charts above.

    • What percentage of the world's aquaculture production came from Asia in 2016?
    • What percentage of the world's aquaculture production comes from North America?
  4. Examine the bar chart below showing the distribution of world aquaculture by species in 2016. 




    Stop and Think

     
    1: In 2016, global aquaculture production totaled nearly 110.2 million metric tons. What percentage of this production was freshwater fish? How does this compare to the percentage of U.S. aquaculture accounted for by freshwater fish (channel catfish, rainbow trout, tilapias, and others) in 2017?