Twenty years ago I would not have recommended eating farmed fish, salmon especially. Salmon farming on the west coast of Scotland had been largely responsible for decimating the wild salmon population; ocean fish species were being depleted to provide fish feed for the farms and the quality of the fish was lacklustre anyway. Farmed salmon were living sedentary lives in the Scottish sea lochs and their flesh was fatty and soft, lacking the muscular texture of a fish that has raced through the oceans, growing slowly and feeding naturally.

The good tidings are that fish farming, or aquaculture, has been cleaning up its act. Over the years I have visited many improved, environmentally friendly seafood farms: producers of prawns in Indonesia and Madagascar, salmon in the Faroe Islands, mussels in a Cornish estuary, and even sturgeon in Latvia.