Aquaculture is perhaps the fastest growing sector of global food production, as we hear repeatedly within our own professional and industry echo-chambers. Yet, throughout the world perhaps the greatest remaining constraint to the advancement of aquaculture is unfamiliarity. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines unfamiliarity as the fact of having no knowledge or experience of something. This lack of knowledge throughout society has allowed many of our loudest critics and regulators to present, with no accountability or debate, misleading and incomplete portrayals that paint all forms of aquaculture as an unholy plague that is ruining the planet.

Is aquaculture, in general, beyond reproach? The answer is a resounding no, of course. But in terms of sustainability it has repeatedly been shown (or, if you prefer, proven) to offer numerous advantages over many livestock and fishing sectors. Nonetheless, we’re an easy target. Unfamiliarity with aquaculture in general and farmed fish specifically on the part of consumers, policy makers and regulators has become an impediment to industry growth on many fronts. In many regions, a lack of objective information is having negative impacts on the consumer level, in the regulatory arena, and in capital markets.

Be it in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa or North America, in grocery stores, seafood markets and restaurants purchasing choices often depend on impressions gleaned from social media and the internet in general. It’s usually the moment when people stare at the seafood counter or menu and say “I read somewhere” or “I heard somebody say” and aquaculture suffers a miniscule setback. Miniscule, perhaps, but those setbacks add up over time.

Apart from their purchasing decisions, uninformed consumers are also often targeted by fund-raising advocacy groups that are – at best – misinformed opportunists, if not wholly disingenuous experts in the art of soliciting donations. As many of us have observed over the years these activities generally take place in developed countries, especially in North America and Europe, because that’s where the easy money is. I guess they’re just trying to make a living, while aquaculture — the easy target — ultimately pays the price.

Social license, the informal community-wide acceptance of an activity, has also emerged as an important aspect of aquaculture development in various countries. As the world gets more crowded, if you’re going to establish an aquaculture operation you’re probably going to have some neighboring communities and user groups that will need to be convinced regarding potential impacts and benefits. Acceptance of aquaculture activities by local communities in many countries often depends on the degree to which they have already been exposed to misinformation.

Perhaps the most insidious impact of aquaculture unfamiliarity involves regulation by overzealous bureaucrats. A recent study by Margaret Hegwood, Halley Froehlich (see the USAS awards article in this issue!) and several of their colleagues confirms that aquaculture is the most regulated food sector in the U.S. Findings indicated that food production industries with less environmental impact, including aquaculture, were disproportionately regulated. And it seems New Zealand, the E.U., and many other governments have the same problem with bureaucracy. As Michael Diamond and Seth Allcorn (1985) proposed, “bureaucracies often are not purposefully coordinated and rational organizations, but instead become structures filled with many dysfunctional individual and group tendencies and performances.” In most bureaucratic organizations, the public interest becomes secondary to the organizational interest, and this leads to a constant effort to justify the mission of the bureaucratic entity, both collectively and individually. Many bureaucrats seem to have built their careers on pretending to infallibly protect society from aquaculture, all the while relying on the public’s unfamiliarity with the topic. Not much different from the fund-raising “advocates.” Once again, it makes us an easy target.

We must all start speaking up.

— C. Greg Lutz, Editor-in-Chief