Experts agree that the rising demand for fish for human consumption cannot be met without a major expansion and sustainable intensification of aquaculture. Our WorldFish authors describe the areas in which research plays a particularly important role in this context.

Often with just one or two ponds managed by a single person or family, smallholders make up an important share of the world’s seafood production. So why are by far the minority of certified aquaculture operations smallholders?

Mangroves in Kenya provide a wide range of valuable services to coastal communities despite their relatively small total area. Studies at single sites show reductions in extent and quality caused by extraction for fuel wood and timber and clearance for alternative land use including saltpans, aquaculture, and tourism. Such studies suggest that Kenyan mangroves are likely to conform to the general global trend of declining area but there are no reliable recent estimates of either total mangrove extent or trends in coverage for the country.

Tainan, located in southwestern Taiwan, is a high-risk region for flooding and climate change effect and has a potential for future heavy rains. Groundwater pumping for aquaculture and irrigation along the coastal plain of Tainan is monitored due to subsidence. Predicting future subsidence and understanding the effect of climate change on subsidence can assist with regard to the planning and management of water and land resources in the early stages of subsidence, whose possible damage can thus be avoided.

Granting property rights in fisheries is assumed to provide incentives for sustainable resource exploitation. These rights might also open other income options for fishers, including some that go beyond the original objectives intended by authorities establishing the right. The opportunity for alternative uses is especially high if the details of these rights are not clearly identified.

Over the past 60 years, China's ancient agricultural village landscapes have been transformed by unprecedented changes in rural policy, population and agricultural technology. The village landscapes of China's Yangtze Plain are among the most ancient, densely populated and intensively managed in the world and have undergone extremely rapid development in recent decades, causing the wholesale transformation of traditional village landscape structure, primarily at fine spatial scales (

Aquaculture can provide important surrogate habitats for waterbirds. In response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the National Resource Conservation Service enacted the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative through which incentivized landowners provided wetland habitats for migrating waterbirds. Diversity and abundance of waterbirds in six production and four idled aquaculture facilities in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley were estimated during the winters of 2011–2013.

Scenic value has long been recognized as an important feature in land use planning and management. In the US, several states have included scenic value provisions in their coastal zone legislation and required that reviews of project proposals consider scenic or aesthetic effects. In Rhode Island, all permitting decisions must take into account the effect of a proposed activity in the coastal zone, such as a new dock or expanded aquaculture facility, on scenic or aesthetic value. However, there is limited guidance for how the terms scenic value or aesthetic value should be interpreted.

Aquaculture continues to diversify and develop rapidly in Bangladesh. A major change has taken place in parts of Bangladesh due to the growth of floodplain aquaculture (FPA) projects. FPA involves the enclosure by the landholders of parts of the floodplain through the creation of embankments and sluice gates. The enclosed water body is stocked with fish seed and the benefits are distributed amongst those who own land in the impounded area.

Changes in the coastal landscape of Southern Sinaloa (Mexico), between 2000 and 2010, were analyzed to relate spatial variations in wetlands extent with the provision and economic value of the ecosystem services (ES). Remote sensing techniques applied to Landsat TM imagery were used to evaluate land use/land cover changes while the value transfer method was used to assess the value of ES by land cover category. Five wetland types and other four land covers were found as representative of the coastal landscape.