McKinsey & Company released a report that reveals a looming seafood shortage amidst a 14% surge in global demand by 2030 could drive major uptake of alternatives to popular seafoods. The report, "The next wave: Alternative-seafood solutions," notes that 85% of fisheries are already at or beyond their limits and restrictions on fish farming mean that traditional seafood supplies cannot keep up with demand.
McKinsey’s analysis pinpoints five popular species—shrimp, tilapia, tunas, salmonids and lobster as prime candidates for substitution by alternative seafoods. For example, it notes that tuna is the third biggest seafood market and is 99% wild-caught, due to being the most difficult to farm, making it highly attractive for alternative production. Alternative seafoods also have a lower carbon footprint as they can be produced locally, with the report showing that tuna alone has a carbon footprint at the retail level of 0.8 to 0.9 kg of CO2 per kilogram.