A new satellite-based study reveals that China's coastal fish farms are declining due to environmental policies, contrasting sharply with India's rapid expansion in aquaculture. The global trend shows a decline in pond area after 2017.

China’s coastal aquaculture ponds are shrinking due to environmental policies while India’s are expanding at the fastest rate of any country, according to a new bird’s-eye view of fish farms worldwide. The conclusions are based on a fresh dataset compiled from millions of satellite snapshots of coastal aquaculture around the world in 2022. From 1990 to 2016, the global pond area for aquaculture expanded rapidly. After 2017, the overall area declined, but changes varied between countries. The...