Americans ate about 16.3 pounds of fish and shellfish per person in 2007, says an NOAA Fisheries Service Study. That’s a drop of one percent from the 16.5 pounds in 2006. From a macro perspective, seafood consumption slipped from 4.944 billion pounds in 2006 to 4.908 billion pounds in 2007. The U.S. is still the third-largest consumer of fish and shellfish, only behind China and Japan.

Of the 16.3 pounds consumed per person, 12.1 pounds of it was fresh or frozen seafood and shellfish. Canned tuna made up 3.9 pounds per person and shrimp 4.1 pounds. The U.S. imports close to 84 percent of its seafood. At least half of the seafood imported to the U.S. is farmed.

“While NOAA works to end overfishing and rebuild wild fish stocks, the U.S. also needs more sustainable domestic aquaculture to help meet consumer demand for healthy seafood and narrow the foreign trade gap,” said Jim Balsiger, acting NOAA assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service.

Aquaculture production in the rest of the world has expanded dramatically in the last 30 years and now supplies half of the world’s seafood demand, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.