Why does this matter? Hokkaido’s situation is not an isolated case. Wild fisheries have largely plateaued globally, with climate change and environmental pressures creating additional challenges for the sector. Aquaculture, meanwhile, continues to expand, reaching  103 million mt of aquatic animal production in 2024 and accounting for 53% of total aquatic animal production, having driven virtually the entire increase in global aquatic output since the late 1980s.

Hokkaido’s cooperatives and hatchery associations are testing that shift at a local level, moving into both marine cage and freshwater hatchery-based farming as declining wild salmon returns push them towards the farmed alternatives increasingly driving growth across the global seafood industry.

Experimenting across models – Hokkaido’s cooperatives are testing more than one route into aquaculture. At Taiki fishing port, Taiki Fisheries Cooperative has added coho salmon to an existing marine farming trial, having started with cherry salmon in 2020 and introduced trout salmon last year, allowing it to compare which species suits local farming conditions best.

The Hidaka Hatchery Association has begun trial production and intermediate rearing of juvenile cherry salmon and rainbow trout, including the fast-growing Donaldson strain. In southern Hokkaido, the Oshima Hatchery Association is testing higher-density rearing of trout juveniles at a hatchery in Fukushima, using capacity that would otherwise sit idle outside the wild-salmon production cycle.

Diversification as key – The projects remain at the trial stage, but the widening participation shows how seriously Hokkaido is treating the collapse in returning chum salmon. Taken together, Hokkaido’s six cooperatives and two salmon hatchery associations are testing diverse routes into aquaculture, from marine cage farming to freshwater hatchery production.

Land and sea, at commercial scale – That same diversity is reflected across the global aquaculture market, where different species, environments and production systems call for different approaches. Sea and land-based systems are increasingly operating side by side, each suited to a different part of the supply chain.

In Norway, KIME Akva has acquired five sites across Northern Norway to farm cod as a supplement to a wild fishery that has seen catches fall 42% over the past eight years. Barents Sea quotas were cut 20% in 2024 a declining number that can be supplemented by KIME Akva’s goal of 24,000 mt of annual production by 2030. In Brazil, Tilabras farms tilapia in cages on the Parana River, taking fish through their full life cycle on a vegan feed diet, and is licenced to produce up to 100,000 mt of farmed protein, demonstrating the potential for large-scale freshwater cage farming.

No single blueprint – The Kingfish Company, meanwhile, takes a different approach, using land-based recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) to produce yellowtail kingfish in a highly controlled environment. Together, the three illustrate that the future of aquaculture is unlikely to be defined by a single production model. The opportunity lies in matching species, geography and technology to the most effective way of producing aquatic protein.

The bottom line – Wild-catch volatility is not confined to Hokkaido, or to salmon. Whether the answer is marine cages, freshwater hatcheries or RAS tanks, the direction is the same: sea and land-based systems are proving complementary, not competing. Production is shifting away from what the ocean happens to provide in a given year, and towards farmed systems that fishing communities and investors can plan around.