I find the farm-raised Atlantic Salmon to be a most delicious and affordable standard. Our local market had a sale last week on Salmon fillet of $2.99/lb. We bought extra for the freezer. It's tasty and very healthy.
Modern fish farming has created opportunity, profitability, and lessened prices for catfish, shrimp. and salmon. I'm sure other species will be added to the list.
"Nowadays, people are raising buffalo, and the population is on the rise. Someday, I expect that there will be more buffalo than there ever were before. The more we eat, the more there will be."
Good points both of you, I tend to agree; fundamentally, I think farm-raising of fish is a good start towards solving the "scarcity" issue of that product known as "seafood." I don't doubt that the coastal and inland resources exist (in many parts of the world) to enable savvy entrepreneurs the means to construct modern, efficient, cost-effective (read: low labor and low capital infrastructure) fish-pen facilities that would then crank out literally tons of wholesome, nutritious, edible biomass - be it salmon, trout, catfish, bass, crabs and other shellfish, squid, etc.
Perhaps bigger fish, or the more exotic species of fish that don't lend themselves to pen-raising techniques, would have to be excluded from this approach, but so what: we still could do it with enough of the widely desirable species and make it work (i.e., "we have the technology").
But here's my fear: we don't necessarily have the political will or the economic "convenience" of just going to farm-raising of fish. You would have to have the resolve to displace a thoroughly entrenched boat-based fisheries industry that includes everything from the small fishermen with their boats and trawlers, all the way up to the big factory trawlers and mega processors (the "hoover super-boats" as Colosis from Ireland called them), that profit from high-seas fishing. Don't forget the brokers, bankers, marketers, middlemen, boat-builders, shipyards, etc. etc. It's big business... What - shut 'em all down?
The devil is in the details, as they say. Imagine the penalty that would inevitably be tacked on to the otherwise inexpensive farm-raised fish (i.e. "tax"). You can bet that somebody somewhere would demand that surcharges be exacted in order to help defray the disruption costs to the "boat-based" fishing industry. Pretty soon, you'd be right back to exorbitantly priced fish.
Somehow, methinks the boat-based fishing industry will never allow this "sea change" (i.e., going to farm-raised fish) unless they got a cut of the action, and the consumer would (as always) still come out with the short end of the fishing rod.
Of course, if enough political will existed, and enough consumer preferences supported the fish farms, then these "glitches" would eventually disappear, and we could (should) all be enjoying 2-dollar a pound salmon steaks. Yummy.