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Limits to food production from the sea

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Mariculture has attracted much attention as a potential new source of food. Yet, the trophic efficiency of marine ecosystems is already high, making further improvements hard to achieve. Increasing marine food production may be possible by fishing at lower trophic levels, but the risks of such a practice must be considered.

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Fig. 1: Secondary production versus net primary production for a variety of ecosystems and agrosystems.
Fig. 2: Ecological efficiency of a variety of ecosystems and agrosystems.

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Acknowledgements

I thank E. Folmer, P. Herman and A. Rijnsdorp for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft of this Comment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wageningen Marine Research, Den Helder, The Netherlands

    Jaap van der Meer

  2. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Ecological Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jaap van der Meer

  3. NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Department of Coastal Systems, Den Burg, The Netherlands

    Jaap van der Meer

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  1. Jaap van der Meer
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Correspondence to Jaap van der Meer.

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van der Meer, J. Limits to food production from the sea. Nat Food 1, 762–764 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-00202-8

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