Challenges in Sustainable Aquaculture Practices and their Impacts on Aquatic Ecosystems

Abstract

Aquaculture is currently the fastest-growing sector in food production globally, responsible for providing more than half of all fish that people consume and thus essential for food security. Intensified production and geographical spread have created an array of environmental issues impacting both freshwater, estuarine, and marine ecosystems. This literature review analyses findings from 20 peer-reviewed articles from 2020 to 2025 in an effort to analyses the eight critical sustainability issues facing aquaculture today, which include nutrient enrichment and eutrophication, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) dissemination, habitat degradation, genetic contamination, reliance on wild-caught species for feed, greenhouse gas emissions, disease transfer, and invasion by exotic species. Impacts on eutrophication, AMR spread, mangrove clearance, genetic introgression, and disease transmission are deemed as the most ecologically damaging effects leading to loss of biodiversity, hypoxia, food web changes, and ecosystem damage. Methods that include IMTA, RAS, precise feeding practices, alternate feed ingredients, vaccination protocols, genomic broodstock screening, and eDNA assessment techniques provide potential mitigation options. This study highlights that some of the major bottlenecks in sustaining these approaches consist of fragmented monitoring efforts, lack of adequate financial motivation, and differential compliance of regulation. In this context, an innovative governance approach which includes ecosystem-based siting principles, production performance metrics, technology incentive structure, and mandatory ecosystem monitoring needs to be adopted to match production capacity growth with ecosystem sustainability.