Fish Farm Feed Tonnage Declines, May Level Out, Sort Of

One of the limits on the fish farm industry is the global supply of fish oil and meal. No food for open-net salmon farms, no farmed salmon.

In the past year, supply of feed has dropped: " Global production of fish meal and fish oil fell 11.5 percent and 7.5 percent respectively in 2014." "The production of fish meal fell to 4.1 million metric tons in 2014, while the amount of fish oil fell to 843,000 mt."

There is a real disparity between the growth and proposed growth of fish farms and the available feed for the fish. Read the article: It all depends on Peru.

See: http://www.intrafish.com/free_news/article1407285.ece.

The article suggests that the feed industry should level out - meaning feed all the farmed fish - in 2015, provided Peru's anchovy stocks hold up with enough mature fish. If not, the global feed supply will not feed all the farmed fish.

But if you go down the articles in the March 5, 2015 list, you will find that new species of farmed fish will require about 50% of fish meal/oil in their diets, meaning the global growth of farmed fish will climb dramatically.

New aquaculture species will drive demand. They include grouper, cobia, amberjack, and tunas.

“Furthermore, as aquaculture evolves and becomes more intensive and modern in the future, there will be more need for formulated feed and in turn need for more fish meal.”

The point is that fish feed had to branch out into other protein because the ocean’s supply of fish protein was limited. Soy, canola, chicken feathers, Antarctica’s supply of krill (almost the bottom of the food chain) – all have environmental issues associated with them. Fish farming has culpability in driving down some stocks, for example, jack mackerel in Chile. Norway has almost eliminated fishing for this very depleted stock, but Asian companies are still fishing it down.