Aquaculture Development

The FishStat software developed by the FAO was used to obtain data and analyze the development of aquaculture.

The importance of certain species in the different environments was also determined from the available statistics.

Certain trends were analyzed by filtering data and changing the presentation of results. The drastic decrease in freshwater production was investigated through the following graph:

Knowing that most of the initial increase in freshwater production came from developing countries, due  the fact that it is a practice easier to achieve than mariculture (FAO 2014) (and therefore these countries can easily set up a practice that results in high income returns), we can infer that its decline took place due to a dramatic decrease in the demand of imported fish products from developed countries associated with the recession following the 2008 financial crisis.

It also became of interest to study the economic importance of the brackish water environment and determine why its trends were different from other environments.

Seeing that a high percentage of the cultured species in brackish water environments correspond to the highest-valued aquaculture species we can understand why a low increase in the quantity produced is matched by rapid increase in the value generated. The economic importance of brackish water environments is, therefore, substantial.

For the full report, see Aquaculture Development