Preface

In the past, capture fisheries and aquaculture have tended to be treated as distinct and isolated sectors. However, commonalities in processing and marketing, together with shared environmental and socio-economic concerns and, in some cases, common resources make it important to establish a clear link, especially when an overlap between the two activities exists.

One of the most obvious cases of overlap occurs in “semi-aquaculture practices” where the life cycle of an on-grown species cannot be managed on a commercial scale and where the “seed” materials (i.e. larvae, juveniles, adults) are collected from the wild.
Until now, these “semi-aquaculture practices” have not been precisely defined. Commonly, words such as “farming”, “cage farming”, “pen farming”, “ranching” and “fattening” have been loosely used, depending on the size, species and time-scale of the on-growing culture practice. A new definition needs to be adopted in order to avoid confusion and to enable the issues related to such farming practices to be identified more easily.
The aim of this report is to define and review this “semi-aquaculture practice”, which has been more accurately named “capture-based aquaculture”.