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• We investigate the role of law in accelerating sustainability for aquaculture. • We use the environmental sustainability criteria of the EU taxonomy regulation. • We find few aquaculture regulations that accelerate a transition to sustainability. • A role of national law is defining the environmental impacts of activities. • We find that vague sustainability standards challenge adaptation and implementation. The global demand for aquaculture products is rising, driven by declining wild fisheries, food security, and blue economy policies and initiatives, suggesting that aquaculture is significant for a sustainable future, despite its negative environmental impacts. Here we investigate the role of law in accelerating the transition towards sustainable aquaculture activities. We use the EU taxonomy for environmentally sustainable activities to define transitional criteria and examine the use of regulations to accelerate the transition in Norway. Even though both the Norwegian government and industrial actors promote transition toward sustainability, we find few regulations in place that accelerate the transition, and we find that sustainability ambitions are likely to be unmet in a business-and-regulation-as-usual scenario. Additional to discussing the role of law in sustainability transitions, we offer a method which can be employed to analyze regulation of different sectors or geographical areas and to devise policy recommendations for sustainable transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]