What Is Aquaculture? Definition, History, and Differences from Fishing

Aquaculture is not a subfield of fishing and is best compared to raising livestock. The name may be misleading because of its association with agriculture, horticulture, or arboriculture, creating an illusory relationship. “Aquaculture” means nothing more than the tending or raising of fish, a definition that we can expand to include edible invertebrates such as shrimp.

Aquaculture defies simple explanation. Besides the raising of fish, as mentioned, the activity includes invertebrates. Biologically speaking, fish have a backbone and are thus considered vertebrates, whereas shrimp, lobster, and other kin lack a backbone and are considered invertebrates. From an evolutionary perspective, invertebrates preceded vertebrates on the evolutionary spectrum. As anyone who has eaten shrimp or lobster knows, invertebrates like lobster have a hard exoskeleton that gives the animal its shape. Note that insects are also invertebrates with a hard exoskeleton. In other words, shrimp and lobster are more closely related to insects than to fish. We group fish and these marine invertebrates together solely because they share the same habitat. From an evolutionary perspective, this grouping is imprecise. Nonetheless aquaculture includes these disparate groups so that in economic terms we must consider them closely related.

This being said, aquaculture should not be considered a fishing activity. First, the raising of fish and invertebrates for commercial purposes is better described as a movement toward domestication. Fish are not domesticated in ways similar to dogs or sheep, because they are not solely dependent on humans for survival and reproduction. The same is true of shrimp, lobster, and other invertebrates. Aquaculture therefore captures wild animals in a highly controlled setting. Such control is not possible in fishing. Aquaculture permits and encourages population control through the reduction of predation and the creation of a stable environment. Fishing differs from aquaculture in another important way. In the ocean, fishers work in a saline environment, whereas initially aquaculture focused on freshwater fish. This is why aquaculture and fishing remain largely separate activities.

Finally, the connection between aquaculture, agriculture, and related activities is often overdrawn. Aquaculture is not a type of agriculture. Strictly speaking, agriculture focuses on the cultivation of plants and so bears little relationship to aquaculture. Moreover, agriculture developed worldwide between roughly 10,000 and 5,000 years ago. Aquaculture is more recent, arising only about 4,000 years ago at the earliest and then in East Asia before spreading elsewhere. One may, however, draw a parallel between aquaculture and livestock raising. Both depend on the raising of edible animals for commercial importance. The problem is that fish, shrimp, lobster, and other freshwater or saltwater organisms are not domesticated. This state of affairs contrasts sharply with the domestication, perhaps 10,000 years ago, of sheep, cattle, pigs, and other livestock.

History. Between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago aquaculture arose in populous East and Southeast Asia. Population pressure seems to have driven this development. The initial efforts focused on the raising of freshwater fish, the most important of which was carp. Opinion is divided about its flavor, and today, at least in the United States, the carp is no longer an important commercial fish. More recently, aquaculture seems to specialize in catfish, for its high fat content gives the catfish a satisfying flavor. One may enter any Walmart in the United States to find catfish that has been raised in large ponds. The American grass corn appears to be the principal food for these fish. Here one may cautiously approach practices in livestock raising, where cattle, pigs, and chicken eat diets based on corn to prepare them for slaughter.

The Chinese were such avid aquaculturists that they began producing treatises on the raising of fish in the fifth century BCE. These works were similar to the prevailing agricultural treatises that were so important in East Asia and later in the Roman Empire. That is, they provided advice on how to raise fish with the least effort and greatest profit. Often the authors claimed to share firsthand experience from their own knowledge of raising fish. These were the types of how-to manuals that appear to be popular among many groups of humans.

The carp reached its apex of popularity between about 500 BCE and 500 CE. The rise of the Tang dynasty in China in the early seventh century declared for linguistic reasons that the carp was a sacred animal and should not be farmed, if one may use this term. Aquaculturists responded by raising other species of fish, a wise move not merely because it skirted imperial opposition but also because the raising of a diversity of fish could satisfy a more diverse palate. From these origins, aquaculture spread over the centuries to Africa, Europe, other parts of Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Aquaculture provides a source of protein and a balance of essential fatty acids. Christopher Cumo.

FURTHER READING:Boyd, Claude E. 2015. Aquaculture, Resource Use, and the Environment. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.
Bunting, Stewart W 2013. Principles of Sustainable Aquaculture: Promoting Social, Economic and Environmental Resilience. New York: Earthscan.
Merrifield, Daniel and Einar Ringo, eds. 2014. Aquaculture Nutrition: Gut Health, Probiotics, and Prebiotics. Columbus: Ohio State University.