Greening the Blue Revolution: How History Can Inform a Sustainable Aquaculture Movement

Abstract

This Paper traces the history of aquaculture from ancient China until the present, highlighting the various degrees of, and reasons for, aquaculture’s popularity at different points throughout history. The history of aquaculture demonstrates that the industry is largely a manifestation of concern over environmental and economic costs of the capture fishery industry; yet the current practice of aquaculture has begun to resemble the tortured past of wild-caught fish, with mono-culture fish farms causing serious environmental and economic problems for inland and coastal human and natural environments. Thus, this Paper argues that the history of the development of the aquaculture industry can serve as a cautionary tale as the industry moves forward, using the rubric of Garrett Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons to delineate the ways in which aquaculture succeeds and fails at achieving one of its fundamental purposes: to provide a sustainable method of protein provision to human society. This Paper posits that aquaculture, historically viewed as a substitute for dwindling wild fish stocks, a solution to the exploitation of a global commons, should itself also be viewed as a contributor to serious tragedies of the commons by both exploitation and by pollution. However, aquaculture has never been adequately regulated holistically as an instigator of environmental and economic problems. Thus, for the aquaculture industry to realize its full, impressive potential as an environmentally beneficial, economically sound, and domestically responsible method of protein production, it must draw lessons from its history to become a sustainable, “green” blue revolution.