This paper aims to supply a comprehensive account of a particular sector of the fisheries industry. TH increase of demand for fish products has involved an uncontrolled exploitation of marine reserves and fishing has reached its threshold of biological sustainability. For these reasons, aquaculture has grown in a corresponding manner in the recent past. The present survey starts from these considerations and aims to describe the general situation of world-wide, European and Italian aquaculture and then to examine the farming and marketing of a particular kind of product, Penaeus spp., which significantly affects global production in terms of value but not of quantity.