Increased competition for aquaculture from fisheries: Does improved fisheries management limit aquaculture growth?

The global fisheries sector has been characterized by three main trends over the last 2–3 decades; fish stocks have been overexploited and supply from wild fisheries is stagnating; fisheries management has improved slowly with the aims of achieving biological sustainability and rent maximization; and supplies from aquaculture have grown continuously. In this paper, the impact of improved fisheries management on aquaculture growth is studied assuming perfect substitution between farmed and wild fish. We find that improved fisheries management, ceteris paribus, reduces the growth potential of global aquaculture in markets where wild fisheries constitute a large share of total supply.