Global fishing Flashcards
“Since 1961 the annual global growth in fish consumption has been twice as high as population growth,
demonstrating that the fisheries and aquaculture sector is crucial in meeting FAO’s goal of a world without hunger and malnutrition”
José Graziano da Silva, FAO Director-General, 2018
Fish as Food
Fish is nutritious, rich in micronutrients, minerals, essential fatty acids, and proteans
Provides c. 1.5bn people with around 20% of their per capita intake of animal protein
Important, high quality nutrition in poorer countries
Garcia & Rosenberg (2010) Food security and marine capture fisheries: characteristics, trends, drivers and future perspectives Phil Trans R Soc B https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0171
A Brief History of Fishing
Coastal communities have been fishing for millenia
Already in the 19th Century levels of exploitation were extremely high in some parts of the world
Improved technology has allowed more fish to be caught, from further afield
Bigger boats, better refridgeration, global markets
The total number of fishing vessels in the world in 2016 was c.4.6 million
75% of the global fleet is in Asia
Motorized vessels represented 61% (2.8M) of all fishing vessels in 2016
Small vessels dominate in all regions: c.86% of global motorized fishing vessels in 2016 were <12 m in length, mostly undecked
Vessels > 24 m make up c.2% of the total fleet
In 2016, 45% of fish for direct human consumption was live, fresh or chilled
Common processing methods include freezing, preserving and curing, but this requires additional infrastructure
In developing countries, capacity for preservation is low, most (53%) fish are sold live or fresh, and ~27% of landed fish wasted as a result
Most fishing in the world is small-scale and low- tech.
But large, high-tech vessels are able to efficiently exploit even very remote areas of the world’s oceans
Amount of ‘fish’ for direct human consumption has increased steadily over the last decade
Amount for non-food / indirect uses (e.g. fishmeal, fish oil) has declined
Currently around 88% of fisheries production is directly consumed by people, cf. 67% in the 1960s
Fisheries production has increased faster than human population, such that per capita consumed fish has increased year on year to 20.3kg per person in 2016 (most recent data)
2016 Major Producer Countries
China 15.2M tonnes
Indonesia 6.1M
USA 5M
UK 0.7M
2016 Major Capture Production
Alaska pollock 3.5M tonnes
Peruvian Anchoveta 3.4M tonnes
Skipjack tuna 2.8M tonnes
Alaska Pollock Theragra chalcogramma - the world’s ‘generic fish’
Alaska pollock is everywhere. If you’re eating fish but you don’t know what kind it is, it’s almost certainly pollock. Prized for its generic fish taste, pollock masquerades as crab meat in california rolls and seafood salads, and it feeds millions as fish sticks in school cafeterias and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches at McDonald’s. That ubiquity has made pollock the most lucrative fish harvest in America— the fishery in the United States alone has an annual value of over one billion dollars.
Kevin M. Bailey, Billion Dollar Fish
Peruvian Anchoveta Engraulis ringens - among the most abundant fish species in the world
The Peruvian anchoveta is a small fish that lives in the southeast Pacific Ocean, primarily off the coasts of Chile and Peru. It lives in the productive waters of upwelling zones, where deep nutrient-rich seawater is brought to the surface by the prevalent currents. Peruvian anchoveta feed in these zones and form absolutely massive schools that may be several kilometers across. These schools are heavily exploited by commercial fisheries, making the Peruvian anchoveta by far the largest fishery, by both numbers of individuals and by weight, in the history of fishing.
Almost all the Peruvian anchoveta landed are turned into fishmeal to feed livestock
To obtain a similar quantity of meal from soy beans would require 60,000km2 additional tropical agriculture
UK Fisheries
Biggest and most valuable fishery in UK (landed by UK vessels into UK ports) 2018:
Mackerel (81,000t, £85M)
Next by weight: herring, haddock, crabs, scallops, nephrops, cod
Next by value: Nephrops (£79M) then scallops, crabs, cod, haddock
Eng, Wales and NI are shellfisheries; only Scotland still catches demersal and pelagic fish in any significant numbers
More than half of the world’s oceans are subject to industrial-scale harvest, spanning an area four times that covered by terrestrial agriculture.
Kroodsma et al. Science (2018) DOI: 10.1126/science.aao5646
22 billion AIS messages from >70,000 industrial fishing vessels processed from 2012-2016
This constitutes 50-75% of active vessels >24m and >75% of vessels >36m (i.e., the majority of ‘industrial’ fishing vessels)
50-70% of fishing effort >100nm from land is from vessels with AIS
In 2016, 40 million hours of fishing activity recorded 460 million km covered
19 billion kWh of energy required for this
Bottom trawling is concentrated on the continental shelves, in 9% of grid cells
Longlining (45%) and purse seining (17%) is more widespread in the open ocean
The average trip length between anchorages was 7100km for longliners, 750km for purse seiners, 510km for trawlers
80% of fishing on high seas by China, Spain, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea
Mean distance to fishing grounds for the major High Seas fishing states have increased markedly in recent decades
Yield (tons per 1000km fished) has declined over the same period.
Tickler et al. (2018) Far from home: Distance patterns of global fishing fleets. Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar3279
