Farming vegetarian fish like tilapia and catfish is one way out of the morass. Too bad tilapia tastes like eating a fluffy white carpet. I suspect one only ever sees catfish fried for a similar reason.

Cultivating oysters, however, isn’t nearly as harmful an activity as farming fish higher up on the food chain, and provided you do so in seabeds, they have plenty of flavor. Even food writer Kim Severson agrees: “If something from the sea could have a terroir, it would be oysters,” she wrote in The New York Times last week about the upswing in small, regional oyster patches. “The new crop of boutique [oyster] growers better understands variables like water quality, tidal flow, shell care and seasonality.”

Although fish farming is, in comparison to terrestrial agriculture, a very young industry, already 45 percent of the fish we currently eat is farmed, and by 2030 an extra 37 million tons of fish will be needed to maintain current levels of fish consumption per person. Given that most of the world’s fisheries are either fully exploited or over-exploited, the so-called “fish gap” will have to be filled by farming.

We really need better techniques and technologies—ideally, ones other than genetic modification. The advantage of aquaculture is that it can be more easily governed than open-access fisheries. Perhaps environmental, political and consumer pressure will improve fish farming to the point where we can feel good about eating it (and it tastes good). People are increasingly aware of the ramifications of farming land conventionally—what about the ocean?