Table 4.

Claims about potential for spatial expansion of marine aquaculture.

• [W]e find vast areas in nearly every coastal country that are suitable for aquaculture. The development potential far exceeds the space required to meet foreseeable seafood demand5.

• [I]f all areas designated as suitable in this analysis were developed… we estimate that ~15 billion tonnes of finfish could be grown every year—over 100 times the current global seafood consumption5.

• If only the most productive areas of the ocean were developed for fish aquaculture, the amount of seafood that is currently captured by all wild fisheries could be grown using less than 0.015% of the ocean’s surface area—a surface area less than Lake Michigan5.

• [T]he Caribbean’s potential to produce cobia from mariculture is extremely large, with an approximate total annual production from suitable sites  of 43.1 MMT10.

• The Caribbean could match its current seafood production by farming cobia in just 179 km2 (0.006%) of its marine space10.