The Hype, Fantasies and Realities of Aquaculture Development Globally and In Its New Geographies

We have been followingthe acceleration of theformation of non-traditionalaquaculture groups andorganizations and their morefrequent messaging aboutaquaculture in the era ofCOVID-19. We are concernedthat some of what we are reading and listening to is returning tofailed parts of our past decades and is fanciful — more hype thanreality — and misinformed. In addition, we are dismayed by thepromotion of global aquaculture information being used to informthe basis and background for local aquaculture developments,especially in the areas of the world where we work and refer tothroughout this article as aquaculture’s “new geographies,” i.e.,almost everywhere outside of Asia where aquaculture is new andnot traditional.

These new geographies are where aquaculture productionremains very small and its practices relatively rare. We are well awarethat over the past 2-3 decades there are fabulous new developments innew aquaculture geographies for aquaculture in Asia — Bangladesh(now world’s fifth largest producer) and Myanmar (now the world’sninth largest producer) come to mind (FAO 2020) — but, fromour Asian experiences, aquaculture there is so very different inits historical, social-ecological, consumer, market and political/governance contexts and settings to be almost irrelevant as modelsfor the rest of the worl