Significance Aquaculture has only recently begun to make significant contributions to the global food system but is undergoing rapid growth and intensification. Identifying the most sustainable intensification options for aquaculture provides an opportunity to avoid some of the environmental pitfalls of agriculture and livestock production. Life cycle assessment is operationalized here as a tool to evaluate a range of environmental impacts resulting from the intensification of aquaculture production in Bangladesh and a subset of trade-offs among them. Intensifying aquaculture production results in multidirectional outcomes across different environmental impact categories. These findings are used to identify simple improvements in farm management practices that can make the intensification of aquaculture more sustainable.