Existing Opportunity

 

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), most capture fisheries are either fully exploited or have been overfished, while demand for seafood continues to grow.

 

Governments, the seafood industry, and consumers look increasingly to aquaculture to fill the gap between wild fisheries landings and seafood demand. In response, aquaculture has been growing at an annual rate of about nine percent worldwide and, by some estimates, now produces nearly half of the fish and seafood eaten.

 

The United States, Manitoba’s nearby trading partner, is a net importer of seafood, with a current seafood trade deficit of approximately $8 billion. About 40 percent of the seafood imported into the United States is farm raised, consisting mostly of salmon and shrimp.The U.S. produces aquaculture products worth about $1 billion annually, but the Department of Commerce has called for the development of a domestic industry worth $5 billion by 2025.

 

Although current U.S. production is dominated by pond-raised catfish, technological advances in recent decades have led to a dramatic increase in the production of farmed freshwater finfish of the Salmonid family, (i.e., Arctic char, Atlantic salmon, Rainbow trout, Brown trout, Steelhead trout, etc.,) in addition to certain warmer water species (i.e., Barramundi, Sea bass, Tilapia and Yellow Perch) becoming more popular as well.