A female Atlantic mackerel typically lays between 200,000 and 450,000 eggs during a spawning season. However, larger, healthier individuals can sometimes produce up to a million eggs, often in multiple batches over several weeks.
it is the mackerel themselves who consider baby mackerel lives to be industrial in scale. they produce that many in anticipation of consumption. Each foodfish humans consume has already slaughtered untold thousands of other fish to grow themselves to size.
They're incredibly hardy, and unlike most other food fish you can easily grow them in simple container setups.