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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 221-229 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Nature Food |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 20 Mar 2024 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2024 |
Bibliographical note
ContributionsD.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.