Aquaculture Industry Has One of Mexico’s Highest Growth Rates

In November 2022, government representatives, leaders from the fishing industry, entrepreneurs and academics gathered together at the Mar de Cortez Forum in Baja California Sur, to discuss the state of aquaculture activities in Mexico. Specialists highlighted the importance of the aquaculture industry to the Mexican Economy.

Aquaculture consists of the cultivation and production of aquatic organisms which is different from fishing. According to Miguel Cisneros, Researcher, the National Institute of Fishery and Aquaculture (INAPESCA), the aquaculture industry is Mexico’s primary sector with the highest growth in the past 10 years. “Aquaculture has had a 15 percent average growth in the last decade,” he said during the conference Sustainable Production of Sea Products.

Christy Walton, a philanthropist and entrepreneur in aquaculture and agriculture, as the Founder of iAlumbra, stressed that Mexico can become one of the world’s biggest aquaculture producers. Currently, Mexico is the 13th largest sustainable fisheries and aquaculture producer worldwide. In 2021, the sector reached a production of 2 million tons, an increase of 1.6 percent compared with the previous year. The production value in 2021 stood at MX$47.239 billion (US$2.362 billion).

According to Inapesca, Mexico has cutting-edge technologies such as automated feeding systems, cages, genetic improvement possibilities and water recirculation systems for fishing and aquaculture work. Juan Lapuente, Director of Aquaculture Research, INAPESCA, highlighted that aquaculture in Mexico has adopted environmentally friendly practices while promoting fish and crustacean farming techniques, which boosts the ecosystems’ resilience capacity in the face of climate change.

Lapuente furthermore pointed out that key actions in the aquaculture sector are focused on reducing marine pollution, overfishing and exploitation of aquatic resources, as well as losses in biodiversity. 

In Mexico, most aquaculture producers are located on the Pacific coast, in the states of Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California Sur, Baja California, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacan. Sinaloa is the state with the largest number of aquaculture farmers and, together with Sonora, they contribute to more than 60 percent of the national aquaculture production inside controlled systems.

On a national scale, the aquaculture industry employs about 60,000 people through the cultivation of more than 70 species including mojarra, shrimp, oyster, carp and trout. Aquaculture is carried out in marine, brackish and freshwater environments.

Attendants to the forum agreed that aquaculture and fishing activities have fallen behind in matters of public policy: "The great challenge we have is that fishing gets recognized as an important activity for the national economy,” said Jose Carrillo, President, the Confederation of Coastal Fishermen.

Carrillo regretted that fishing activities have been “demonized to the maximum,” even though Mexico has 263 coastal municipalities. “According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, behind each fisherman, there are eight other jobs,” he said.