You’re asking about whether farmed fish dominate anyway, right? I think the specific claims I made about wild fish (including wild fish caught to feed farmed fish) still hold, but it’s possible that the main effects of eating fish, whether wild-caught or farmed, are on farmed fish, because
if you eat more wild-caught fish, others will eat more farmed fish in expectation, because they’re substitute goods, and
the weight of farmed fish produced will probably be more responsive to your diet decisions than the weight of fish caught from the wild is, because of greater price elasticity of supply, as wild fish stocks are limited and often exploited near the rate that gives maximum sustainable yield or are managed specifically to maintain stocks and catch (e.g. quotas).
Still, I think there could be on the order of 10x more wild-caught anchovies than farmed fish (e.g. see the columns for % slaughtered/bred/used annually in this table) and the population effects are probably larger than the catch effects (based on my toying with fishery models), and wild arthropods are even more numerous so could be impacted more. So, even if the effect by weight is smaller, the effect by number of individuals could be larger. Again, I still feel pretty clueless, as I haven’t seen a model attempting to quantify all of these effects together. If you ignore wild arthropods (aquatic and terrestrial), I think there’s a decent chance we could answer the question either way, but I’m less optimistic when you include wild arthropods.
On the other hand, eating fish could increase insect farming; aquaculture is a primary target market for farmed insects. See for example, this report.
For what it’s worth, I also think wild arthropods could easily dominate all diet decisions in the near term in expectation, but if you ignore them, I’d guess eating relatively small farmed animals and their products, like shrimp, herbivorous farmed fish, chicken and eggs, is bad.
Interesting, will check these out.
Given that many fish we eat come from farms (and that number is increasing), do you think these arguments still hold?
You’re asking about whether farmed fish dominate anyway, right? I think the specific claims I made about wild fish (including wild fish caught to feed farmed fish) still hold, but it’s possible that the main effects of eating fish, whether wild-caught or farmed, are on farmed fish, because
if you eat more wild-caught fish, others will eat more farmed fish in expectation, because they’re substitute goods, and
the weight of farmed fish produced will probably be more responsive to your diet decisions than the weight of fish caught from the wild is, because of greater price elasticity of supply, as wild fish stocks are limited and often exploited near the rate that gives maximum sustainable yield or are managed specifically to maintain stocks and catch (e.g. quotas).
Still, I think there could be on the order of 10x more wild-caught anchovies than farmed fish (e.g. see the columns for % slaughtered/bred/used annually in this table) and the population effects are probably larger than the catch effects (based on my toying with fishery models), and wild arthropods are even more numerous so could be impacted more. So, even if the effect by weight is smaller, the effect by number of individuals could be larger. Again, I still feel pretty clueless, as I haven’t seen a model attempting to quantify all of these effects together. If you ignore wild arthropods (aquatic and terrestrial), I think there’s a decent chance we could answer the question either way, but I’m less optimistic when you include wild arthropods.
On the other hand, eating fish could increase insect farming; aquaculture is a primary target market for farmed insects. See for example, this report.
For what it’s worth, I also think wild arthropods could easily dominate all diet decisions in the near term in expectation, but if you ignore them, I’d guess eating relatively small farmed animals and their products, like shrimp, herbivorous farmed fish, chicken and eggs, is bad.