Seabass were historically cultured in coastal lagoons and tidal reservoirs before the race to develop the mass-production of juveniles started in the late 1960s. Fish culture was initially associated with salt production in coastal evaporation pans and marshes. The salt was harvested during the high evaporation season of summer and autumn, and fish were cultured during winter and spring. The supply for this culture came from trapping schools of fish that lived in these estuarine areas.
During the late 1960s, France and Italy competed to develop reliable mass-production techniques for juvenile seabass and, by the late 1970s, these techniques were well enough developed in most Mediterranean countries to provide hundreds of thousands of larvae. The European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) was the first marine non-salmonid species to be commercially cultured in Europe and at present is the most important commercial fish widely cultured in Mediterranean areas. Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Croatia and Egypt are the biggest producers.
