Aquaculture - A Most Profitable $70 Billion Mega Trend Island Bounty exists because it understands the significant opportunities available to enhance shareholder value in the food industry by combining high technology research and development with solar, wind, wave and geothermal clean energy technology.  Island Bounty is well aware that new innovations in solar and wind energy technology, combined with its research in highest quality environmental factures and water measurement systems are providing the opportunity for the Company to develop more efficient and more profitable products and services for the food industries. It wishes to become a major player in the innovative clean energy products, set industry leadership standards for its workers, and market renewable energies to the food industries. Seafood is One of the Fastest Growing International Commodity Industries The seafood trade is one of the world's largest and fastest growing international commodity industries. Worth more than $70 billion a year, it exceeds the world trade in all grains combined and represents more than twice the combined world trade in all tea, coffee and cocoa. Almost 200 countries supply fish and seafood products to the global marketplace, consisting of more than 800 commercially important species of fish, crustaceans and mollusks, including 30 species of shrimp alone. These products take hundreds of forms, ranging from canned tuna to fresh boneless salmon fillets, from salted herring roe to dried shark fins, frozen pollock block, individually quick frozen breaded cod portions, smoked mackerel, clam juice, live lobster, fish meals and oil. The market is supplied by a global network of hundreds of thousands of fishing vessels and marine and inland aquaculture establishments, thousands of processors and tens of thousands of wholesalers and brokers. It is Unlikely That You Know Where Your Seafood Comes From The crab used in ‘Maryland’ crab cakes most likely comes from Indonesia, Thailand or Venezuela, even when they’re ordered at a restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay. Bay scallops, traditionally from New England and a popular item on menus across the country, today are raised primarily in China. And nearly 90 percent of all shrimp, the number one seafood consumed in the United States, is now imported from farms in Thailand, India, Vietnam, Ecuador and China rather than caught wild in the Gulf of Mexico or other nearby waters. The globalization of the fishing industry and the decline of many fish populations in U.S. waters has meant that the fish we eat no longer comes from where it once came," said James Anderson, professor and chairman of the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at the University of Rhode Island. "It now comes to us from around the globe, from southern Chile to northern Russia to tiny islands in the most remote places on the planet." That’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to Anderson, one of the leading authorities on the economics of the seafood industry. But, he says, it’s important that consumers become aware of where their seafood originated.   $70 Billion in Seafood Sales Almost 200 countries supply fish and seafood products to the global marketplace, and more than 800 species of fish are actively traded around the world. With sales of over $70 billion, the total value of internationally-traded seafood products exceeds the trade of grains, meats, and beverages, according to figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. "When we shut down our fisheries here, our consumption of fish doesn’t go down," Anderson explained. "We just get it elsewhere. What has happened is that fish are generally flowing from the developing countries to the developed countries. And the future of these developing countries depends on their ability to harvest their resources smartly and sell them profitably to the rich countries." Further evidence of the globalization of the industry comes from the fact that fish caught or raised in the U.S. -- like flounder and cod -- are shipped to China to be cut into fillets and then shipped back to U.S. markets. Globalization is just one of the "mega-trends" that the URI professor cites in his new book, The International Seafood Trade, published last summer by Woodhead Publishing Ltd. He also says that the industry’s major technological trend is aquaculture, which now accounts for approximately 30 percent of the global seafood harvest.