Farm-fresh barramundi, mate?

The July 18 issue of TIME magazine has a cover story titled "The future of fish: Can farming save the last wild food?"

The piece focuses on a "perfect" farmed species called barramundi, native to Australia, and makes two major points.

First, fish farming might help save wild fish, because without aquaculture the pressure to overfish would be greater.

Second, with a world population of nearly 7 billion and rising, we have no choice but to farm the sea just as we've long farmed the land.

Says the article: "It's not that commercial fishing will disappear; in fact, sustainable fisheries like Alaska's wild-salmon industry may even produce boutique foods, finally earning what they're worth."