By Vijay Jayaraj
Amidst the serene backwaters of Alleppey in Southern India, where emerald waters weave through coconut groves, there emerges a dish that embodies the soul of coastal India – Fish Moilee. A representation of India’s maritime bounty, the dish is a golden-hued masterpiece of silky-smooth coconut cream, tender fish and fragrant spices simmered to perfection.
The star of the show, however, is the fish. India, like many countries, is blessed with vast expanses of marine waters. The main ones are the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. Growing up surrounded by saltwater on three sides, I was always fascinated with the culture of fisheries that sustain the livelihoods of 30 million Indians.
Today, fishing is thriving in the subcontinent. Fish landings are robust, aquaculture is booming, and the data pour cold water on the overheated rhetoric of environmental collapse. Let’s dive into the numbers and the science that prove the fish aren’t succumbing to a warm climate. They’re adapting to it.
Exactly ten years ago, I was a postgraduate researcher at the University of British Columbia’s fisheries center, where I was primarily tasked with understanding the evolutionary genetics of marine life and various thresholds of adaptations to varying environments, especially climate change.
Contrary to the media drumbeat of apocalypse, I found that fishes are highly resilient and facing no crisis from climatic variations. In its 2024 report on “The State of World Fisheries and Agriculture,” the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) states that “fisheries and aquaculture production reached an all-time high of 223.2 million metric tons (in 2022), worth a record $472 billion.”
The U.S. East Coast and Gulf of America witnessed modest and selective increases in fish landings during 2022 and 2023. The data show “capture fisheries production has remained largely unchanged for decades” despite reported concerns about climate change.
Fishes caught in the wild and produced in aquaculture “constituted about 15% of the animal protein supply, reaching over 50% in several countries in Asia and Africa.”
This is great news given how malnutrition and protein deficiency kill millions of children and adults each year. In 2023, India’s marine fish landings reached 3.55 million metric tons, up from 2022’s 3.51 million tons and a whopping surge of nearly 16% from 2021’s 3.06 million tons.
And there will be no shortage in the future. Global “aquatic animal production is expected to increase by 10% by 2032 to reach 205 million tons,” with aquaculture expansion and capture fisheries accounting for most of the rise in production.
Climate change, we were told, will make fish farming impossible: Warmer waters breed disease, disrupt breeding cycles and turn ponds into dead zones. Yet, the FAO reports that aquaculture is growing in tropical regions like Southeast Asia and India, where temperatures are already high.
Warm water species like sardines and anchovies – backbones of India’s catch – thrive in temperatures that would make a polar cod blanch. India’s tropical waters, averaging 77 – 80 degrees Fahrenheit, are a sweet spot for these stocks, and 2023’s landings bear that out.
In the states of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, brackish water shrimp farming is a gold mine, with exports raking in billions. Farmers aren’t wringing their hands over CO2; they’re tweaking feed, monitoring water quality and breeding hardier strains.
So why the endless dirge about dying oceans? It’s not about evidence; it’s about ideology. Alarmism gets clicks, grants and political clout. Stories about “fishless seas by 2048” ignore recovery trends and push alarmism. Activists amplify the noise, cherry-picking data to push anti-fishing agendas.
Yes, oceans face challenges. But the narrative of inevitable collapse serves neither science nor society. It distracts from solvable problems like plastic waste and habitat destruction, while demonizing carbon dioxide, which is greening Earth and enriching aquatic food chains.
India’s delicious coconut fish curry is representative not of climate despair but of nature’s fecundity – a reminder that human ingenuity and nature’s resilience can coexist. As global fisheries break records, let us replace fear with facts, and apocalyptic rhetoric with actionable stewardship. The fish, it seems, are doing just fine.
This commentary was first published at [your]NEWS on April 9, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna
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The biggest threat to wild caught seafood is overfishing. It has recently happened to the North Atlantic cod, and to the North Sea sand smelt, itself overfished as food for farmed North Atlantic salmon to the detriment of Arctic puffins.
There are no known threats to farm raised catfish, tilapia, shrimp, trout…
Again scratching the bottom of the alarm barrel.
There’s no question we humans have had too many unnecessary over exploitations, but the ocean is more complicated than either freshwater or terrestrial examples. It is also true that there is a overload of negative prognostications, to use a bigger word than necessary. It is a mathematical nightmare, but these heavily fished marine fish females produce eggs in the millions apiece which have given the modelers fits, some of whom were clearly biased against commercial catches. I wouldn’t have standing on cold water fisheries but was at an American Fisheries Society meeting in Halifax in the mid-1990s when the cod catch cratered, but lobsters and other fish subsequently increased. It didn’t help to have heavy fishing, but there was an ignored paper about the physical changes that happened. Check out (Bundy, A. 2005. Structure and functioning of the eastern Scotian Shelf ecosystem before and after the collapse of groundfish stocks in the early 1990’s. Canadian J. Fish Aquatic Science. 62:1453-1473. ).
Considering an earlier event ( Collins, J. W. 1884. History of the tilefish. Report Commissioner U. S. Fish and Fisheries. 10(1882):237-292.) when largely tilefish but also lots of cod, over a billion fish estimated, appeared in an area of 175X25 miles between Cape May and Nantucket it took over a decade for recovery (Bumpus., H. 1899. The reappearance of the tilefish. Bulletin U. S. Fish Commission. 18(1898):321-333.). Not confirmed but probably a temperature decrease, but one suggestion for an earthquake.
I did have standing on the “Blackened Redfish” mess (Hoese, H. D., D. W. Beckman, R. H. Blanchet, D. Drullinger, and D. L. Nieland. 1991. A biological and fisheries profile of Louisiana red drum Sciaenops ocellatus. Fishery management plan series Louisiana Department Wildlife Fisheries. Baton Rouge, LA. 49(1):93 p.). The latest paper on it showing increased populations since the 1980s (Anderson, J., M., et al. 2023. Rapid changes in age structure, mortality, and escapement accompanied stock recovery of the estuarine red drum population of Texas. Marine Coastal Fisheries. 15(5):e10247. https://doi.org/10.1002/mcf2.10247 ) ignored the extensive kills from three 1980s freezes well covered in this paper from the same organization (McEachron, L. W., et al. 1994. Winter mass mortality of animals in Texas bays. Northeast Gulf Science. 13(2):121-138.). Results of the 2021 freeze not in yet.
Despite the only place approaching overfishing was Florida, with blamed Texas commercial fishing a small fraction of the freeze kill, the result was an exponential increase in red drum papers, Mississippi only still has a commercial fishery, some culture even in China with escapees, and you can buy it in the market at a cost usually higher than any other fish. History is covered in a series of books with considerable statistics, the last–( Fritchey, R. 2020. A Different Breed of Cat. New Moon Press. Golden Meadow. La. 362pp.)
One of the cold water modelers was quoted in concluding (paraphrased) that we didn’t have a science of recruitment which is understandable when you consider the exponentials involved between eggs, larvae, juveniles and adults. (Cushing, D. H. 1996. Towards a science of recruitment in fish populations. Excellence in Ecology. Inter-Research 7. 175pp.)
Keep in mind that in the ocean the colder water is only 100 feet from you – downwards.
“story tip” Yes, but is acid rain being replaced by plastics rain? And, the National Parks are experiencing more hot days….is it due to the man made pollutant CO2?
The 4 fish shown in the photo – are they bream?
I kept reading hoping to find out what kind of fish you were using. No luck.
I reckon they’re bream.
In Australia, they thrive in estuaries, surf, even brackish river waters.
And eaten fresh, delicious.
I believe they’re even being farm-grown in salty dams in Western Australia.
“Star of Coconut Fish Curry Thrives in Modern Climate”
That makes zero sense to me.
I was also confused by the title at first, and it’s certainly unclear, but it’s referring to the fish species (unfortunately not named) used in coconut fish curry as the “star” of the dish
I’ve heard of curry, never had it. But I thought it was referring to a fish called “Star of Coconut”.
Slow temperature change is no problem. Rapid? Deadly. Hatchery rainbow trout raised in 52°F water dropped into a 42°F creek – 50% dead in three hours. (USFS Campground, “Glass Creek”, about 9 miles north of Mammoth Lakes, CA. I was the volunteer campground host and saw it happen. During the following 7 days the hatchery made the necessary adjustment to their pond.)