I was blown away by Urbina's article. It was so rich with facts, and so deeply reported that my mind was running every which way. It seems almost like a joke that fresh caught fish would be used to feed fish grown in acquaculture. Is this some dystopian science fiction book that we are living in?

But when you think about a growing, global population, we will not be able to live off of the same farming, fishing, hunting, or agricultural practices that sustained us for centuries. Times change and the history of humanity is closely bound to the way we have either coped or failed to cope with growing populations and the food needed to sustain them. This doesn't make some of the figures any less daunting:

Global demand for seafood has doubled since the nineteen-sixties. Our appetite for fish has outpaced what we can sustainably catch: more than eighty per cent of the world’s wild fish stocks have collapsed or are unable to withstand more fishing. Aquaculture has emerged as an alternative—a shift, as the industry likes to say, from capture to culture.

This is not inherently a bad thing. I know people will of course oppose acquaculture because it isn't natural in some way. But neither is farming in some sense. The way we do it, however, is crucial, and Urbina's reporting shows that maybe the supply chain is not quite ready for it.

It looks like there is also a related documentary about it, which I haven't seen yet, but it's only 10 minutes long and looks pretty interesting:

https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/how-fish-meal-production-is-destroying-gambias-waters