Wild fish consumption can balance nutrient retention in farmed fish

David F. Willer*, Richard Newton, Wesley Malcorps, Bjorn Kok, David Little, Anneli Lofstedt, Baukje de Roos, James P.W. Robinson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Wild fish used as aquafeeds could be redirected towards human consumption to support sustainable marine resource use. Here we use mass-balance fish-in/fish-out ratio approaches to assess nutrient retention in salmon farming and identify scenarios that provide more nutrient-rich food to people. Using data on Norway’s salmon farms, our study revealed that six of nine dietary nutrients had higher yields in wild fish used for feeds, such as anchovies and mackerel, than in farmed salmon production. Reallocating one-third of food-grade wild feed fish towards direct human consumption would increase seafood production, while also retaining by-products for use as aquafeeds, thus maximizing nutrient utilization of marine resources.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)221-229
Number of pages9
JournalNature Food
Volume5
Issue number3
Early online date20 Mar 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2024

Bibliographical note

Contributions
D.F.W., R.N., W.M., B.K., D.L, A.L, B.d.R and J.P.W.R participated in study design and data collection. J.P.W.R. analysed the data and produced the figures. D.F.W. and J.P.W.R. wrote the final paper. All authors reviewed and approved the paper before submission.

Data Availability Statement

All data are available at https://github.com/jpwrobinson/SalmonFeedNutrients. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability
All code is available at https://github.com/jpwrobinson/SalmonFeedNutrients.

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