Aquaculture History

Wed, Jul 1st 2009, 12:37

In China they have been practicing Aquaculture since ancient times. In fact, it was the fattening of wild carp that led to the mutated and domesticated goldfish … and the fishpond culture still so popular today.


Since 2500 BC the Chinese would divert fish coming down from rivers in flood, into artificial lakes where they would be held and fattened on water nymphs and silkworm droppings, providing an important source of protein for communities.

This Aquaculture, using simple technology and minimal inputs, has been practiced throughout Asia ever since. Historians have gleaned from hieroglyphics that the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom (from 2052 BC) were doing the same. The Romans perfected the art of culturing oysters and many of their methods survive into modern day.

Modern Aquaculture can be traced to Germany in the early 1700s when a German farmer was successful in hatching fish eggs and farming fish from these. Initially this method of fish farming was only used on fresh water fish species and it was only with the advance of science in the 20th Century that saltwater fish have been bred in the same way.

Aquaculture is now the fastest growing sector of the food industry. In Asia, there was a move from small-scale traditional methods to more intensive fish rearing. Since then there has been a worldwide Aquaculture revolution. In the 1970s Aquaculture comprised 3.9% of seafood consumed, compared with 27.3% in 2000.

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