Insights from Chinese Mariculture Development to Support Global Blue Growth

Mariculture development has contributed to improving global food and nutrition security. This commentary reviews the importance of blue growth and the potential for aquaculture to fill the nutritional gap left by wild fisheries. On this basis, Chinese mariculture development was analyzed, focusing on five representative large-scale aquaculture practices over the past 60 years. The Chinese mariculture industry has moved from an extensive and low-efficiency development stage to an intensive and high-efficiency development stage; however, the development of the industry has been characterized by environmental and economic over-farming. From a policy perspective, to circumvent these two types of over-farming, more policies and actions by both the public sector and stakeholders are needed.