Aquaculture Accountability Project

03/26/2026

"Seafood You Can Trust." That's what shoppers at nearly 200 Save Mart and Lucky stores will soon see at the seafood counter—alongside the Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification logo.

Here's what the label doesn't say: BAP sets no quantitative limits on sea lice. Its audit reports are confidential. Its board is dominated by the companies it certifies. And 78.6% of shrimp refusals at the U.S. border so far in 2026 have been traced to BAP-certified facilities.

AAP reviewed the record. Here's what we found.

No sea lice limits. No public audit trail. A board dominated by industry insiders. Meet the certification behind your grocery store's newest "sustainable seafood" label.

03/20/2026

The shrimp on your plate may come with promises of sustainability. So did the industry that destroyed nearly 10% of the Sundarbans.

Researcher Tahura Farbin documents what industrial shrimp aquaculture actually delivered to coastal Bangladesh: salinized farmland, collapsed livelihoods, and 2.5 million people pushed into forest dependency. Those "pink treasures destined for distant plates in Europe and America" concentrated profits at the top while local communities absorbed the costs—and then faced criminalization when conservation bans arrived with no alternatives attached.

Farbin's warning is that blue carbon investment risks repeating this exact cycle. But as she makes clear, the pattern didn't start with carbon markets. It started with who gets to define "sustainable"—and who never gets asked.

Planned investments in these mangrove forests — hailed for their carbon-sequestration potential — could further leave people behind and ecosystems at risk.

03/05/2026

The aquaculture industry has been swapping wild fish in feed for crops like soy and rapeseed, pointing to this as evidence the sector is cleaning up its act. A new study followed that shift across European aquaculture over 20 years.

Greenhouse gas emissions linked to feed production rose 314%. Land use increased 594%. Water consumption climbed 236%. And these aren't just a reflection of industry growth—even per kilogram of fish produced, emissions more than doubled and land use grew by 336%.

The environmental burden didn't shrink—it moved, from ocean ecosystems to agricultural and forest landscapes. And marine ecosystems remained under pressure throughout.

Meanwhile, new Harvard-led research estimates that the small wild fish ground up for aquaculture feed could nourish up to 31 million undernourished people in the countries where they're caught if they stayed in local food systems instead.

We wrote about both studies and what they mean for the "just change the feed" argument.

New study finds that shifting feed ingredients does not reduce aquaculture's environmental harms, but intensifies them on land.

03/03/2026

FoodNavigator just covered our report with Farm Forward, The Myth of "Sustainable" Aquaculture—citing our findings on fishmeal dependence, ecosystem harm, and certification greenwashing.

The article gives the industry plenty of room to respond. We expect pushback; that's a sign the argument is landing. What matters is that these questions are now on the table in food industry media: Does aquaculture actually reduce pressure on wild fish? Do certifications deliver on their promises? Does expansion mean more sustainability—or more harm?

Our answer, backed by data: the myths aren't holding up.

See the full report at AquacultureAccountability.org/myth and the coverage below:

A recent debate over the sustainability of aquaculture emphasizes the role of policy, regulation, technology and certification to determine whether seafood farming is climate-smart or detrimental.

02/26/2026

Aquaculture is one of the fastest-growing food production sectors in the world—and it’s increasingly framed as a conservation solution. But are sustainability labels keeping pace with the science?

Join us for a research briefing on “sustainable seafood” claims, certification standards, and what the evidence actually tells us about disease pressure, feed sourcing, and environmental trade-offs.

Register to attend:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6D7jpCQFSMqq6w_iAX7-jg #/registration

02/17/2026

Bacterial diseases are business as usual for factory fish farming, not isolated incidents. Government testing is extremely limited, so most pathogens are never found.

No illnesses have been reported after the FDA found evidence of listeria monocytogenes in a random sample of the Wellsley Farms farm-raised Atlantic salmon.

01/30/2026

We talked with Our Hen House this month about the dangers of fish farming. Have a listen below!

🚨 NEW EPISODE OUT NOW 🚨

"The aquaculture industry has sold fish farming as a lifeline for oceans, but instead it's delivered factory farms that devour wild fish, bring diseases, and pollute our coasts." - Laura Lee Cascada

In today's episode, the founder of Aquaculture Accountability Project reveals how the fish farming industry's marketing tactics have transformed global consumption patterns while creating environmental havoc.

Listen on your fav podcatcher, watch on our YouTube, or check out the link in the comments!

01/27/2026

Breaking: A report by AAP with Farm Forward dives into the myths of "sustainable" aquaculture and reveals the truth: despite decades of marketing itself as a silver-bullet solution to overfishing, fish farming intensifies pressure on wild fish, while also driving up overconsumption of seafood, spreading disease, misusing antibiotics, and exacerbating climate change. And the industry uses greenwashing certifications to sanitize factory farming practices and gain the trust of consumers and sustainability professionals.

Read the full report and find out what a truly ocean-friendly food system looks like.

This report breaks down aquaculture's top sustainability myths, exposing the science-backed reality: fish farming harms the ocean.

01/20/2026

Mowi, the world's largest salmon farming company, called 2025 a "dreadful" year for business in Canada because of massive mortality levels, amounting to hundreds of thousands of animals. Despite the managing director naming it his "worst experience ever," he downplayed the high death toll as only "slightly higher than normal."

Salmon farming, by design, is a wasteful industry. Salmon can require up to 5x their weight in wild-caught fish as feed, and some farms routinely experience 15 or 20 percent mortality.

Taking farmed salmon off menus and our plates can make a huge difference.

Environmental conditions made 2025 a "dreadful" year for salmon farming, says Mowi managing director Gideon Pringle. Still, he says a recent report of nearly 25,000 salmon deaths at the company's Friar Cove site is not a cause for concern.

01/15/2026

High mortality is rampant on fish factory farms, but DYK that farmed fish aren't the only losses? Millions of "cleaner" fish, used to eat sea lice, also die on farms because of dismal conditions.

A campaigner has made the first estimate of the total number of cleaner fish that have died while grazing lice on farmed salmon. It’s condemned as a “colossal waste of life” that should cease.

01/12/2026

We don't often realize the human toll of fish farming. In Scotland, a union group has called for a formal safety review of the salmon industry, as there have been 139 serious accidents and one fatality in the last 5 years. And in Chile, the largest salmon supplier to the U.S., there have been a whopping 84 deaths since 2013.

The industry promised a "Blue Revolution" but instead delivered danger and environmental devastation.

Original article: Industria salmonera letal: Muerte de buzo en Melinka eleva a 84 los trabajadores acuícolas fallecidos Kickoff of the 2026 Aquaculture

12/30/2025

The Scottish salmon industry is under fire for animal and environmental harms this holiday season.

From Abigail Penny at Animal Equality UK: "When you see the haunting footage we’ve captured, it’s hard not to believe that this is an industry blighted by contempt for animal, as well as human, welfare. Salmon trapped in underwater cages while they’re eaten alive by lice, blind, diseased, or deformed.

"And when you consider that every farmed salmon is typically fed hundreds of other wild-caught fish before it, too, is then eaten by humans, it’s painfully clear that Scottish salmon farming is far from luxurious and nowhere near sustainable."

Read more:

EXCLUSIVE: Following damning reports of cruelty and disease in the Scottish salmon farming industry, health experts say the ‘superfood' isn't even as good for you as you might think