Farmed fish and shrimps need sustainability boost

WWF 2 Mar 09;

Aquaculture, revealed in a key UN analysis today to be the basis of all future growth in global seafood production, desparately needs to be put on a more sustainable basis, leading global environment organization WWF said today.

State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture 2008 (SOFIA 2008), released this morning by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said that food supplies from aquaculture now equal those from ocean and freshwater capture fisheries. The report also documents a continuing drop-off in yields from the world's marine capture fisheries, with FAO saying "more closely controlled approaches to fisheries management" are needed.

"The dramatic growth in aquaculture makes it more and more urgent to ensure that aquaculture becomes more sustainable and that supplying the stock and the feed for fish farming becomes less of a burden on traditional fisheries,” said Miguel Jorge, Director of WWF’s Global Marine Programme.

“Coastal aquaculture must also stop making inroads into fish habitat such as mangrove areas, it must becomes less polluting and less of a disease risk and it must be carried out without making communities more vulnerable to natural disasters."

A series of Aquaculture Dialogues, coordinated by WWF and involving more than 2,000 farmers, NGOs and scientists are currently creating global standards to minimize the key environmental and social impacts associated with aquaculture.

Consideration is now being given to whether the standards – initially for the 12 species with the greatest economic and environmental impact – should be administered by a body similar to the Marine Stewardship Council, the leading sustainability certification scheme for marine capture fisheries.

SOFIA 2008 also recorded a rise to 80 per cent in the number of fisheries that are fully or over-exploited, adding yet more weight to predictions that collapsing fish stocks threaten food security in developing countries and the viability of fisheries and coastal communities across the world.

Long -promised action on trade, unsustainable fishing fleet subsidies and protection for marine resources has again been unforthcoming.

“Once again, the leading global fisheries analysis has come out to say the state of of the world’s fisheries is worse than we thought it was,” said Jorge.

“Indeed we and many other analysts believe that the real position of the oceans is much, much worse than the gloomy report from Rome this morning as little account of is taken of rampant illegal, unreported and unrecorded fishing.

“Also, in many cases, even legal fishing quotas have no relationship to actual fish stocks. To take possibly the best known example, the legal quota of Mediterranean bluefin tuna is around twice what the scientists recommend and the illegal catch is equal to the already inflated legal quota.”

WWF is calling urgently for fisheries to be managed in line with scientific advice, for more closed seasons and areas to allow stocks to recover, for massive reductions in bycatch and discards in fishing and for an end to the subsidies that distort the relationship between fishing effort and the fishing resource.

Plenty More Fish In The Sea? Think Again - Reports
Deborah Zabarenko, PlanetArk 3 Mar 09;

WASHINGTON - The world's waters were once seen as a boundless source of fish for humans to eat, but over-fishing and aquaculture have depleted some species and left others famished and weak, two reports said on Monday.

Climate change is expected to add more stress for fish populations, forcing warm-water species further toward the poles, changing marine and freshwater food webs and habitats, the reports said.

The big fish most likely to appear on rich countries' dinner plates -- like salmon and tuna -- have already been over-fished, the nonprofit environmental group Oceana reported, adding that now the smaller fish that these fish eat are under pressure.

"We've caught all the big fish and now we're going after their food," said Margot Stiles, a lead author of Oceana's report, "Hungry Oceans." "We're stealing the ocean's food supply; these are fish that we basically never used to eat."

When fish stocks decline, that poses a potential problem for humans, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

"The question is whether per capita supplies of fish for human consumption will remain steady or peak in the near future and then start to fall," the UN food organization said in a report on the state of the world's fisheries and aquaculture.

'SURREPTITIOUS MESSAGE'

In the last three decades, aquaculture has grown rapidly, from about 6 percent of fish available for human consumption in 1970 to about 47 percent in 2006, the UN organization said.

The UN report questioned the notion that aquaculture would automatically grow to meet demand, saying this sends a "surreptitious message" that no public policies are needed.

"Aquaculture-enabling policies are essential for the steady and sustainable growth of the sector," the report said.

The drop in the amount of available prey fish -- small, fast-growing species such as herring, sardines, squid and krill -- means predator fish, seabirds and whales that feed on the little fish are underfed, sometimes so much so that they can't reproduce or feed their young, the Oceana report said.

With commercially attractive fish like Pacific salmon and blue fin tuna depleted in the wild, fishing fleets turn to prey fish for revenue where in the past they only used these species for subsistence and bait, Oceana said.

Some of these prey fish are used for human consumption, but increasingly, they are fed to farmed versions of the large predator fish, Stiles said. This in turn means there are less

Climate change could add new problems, both reports said, because prey fish are particularly sensitive to warm temperatures and prey populations have collapsed when heavy fishing proceeded during previous warm periods.

To help reverse the trend, the Oceana report said, existing fisheries need to set conservative catch limits, avoid fishing in depleted species' breeding hotspots and restore the prey fish in the wild to support a comeback of predator fish.

The UN report was released on the first day of a meeting of he global organization's Committee on Fisheries in Rome.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

Fish numbers outpace human population
Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist 3 Mar 09;

It's increasingly likely that the fish you eat was farmed not caught wild, according to the latest statistics of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The group's two-yearly assessment of world fisheries, published today, comes with mitigated good news.

The outlook for wild ocean fish remains gloomy: 80% of all fisheries are at or beyond their maximum yields, and over-fishing continues to climb. Yet the amount of fish available to eat is growing faster than the human population, thanks to a boom in fish farming.

The FAO calculates that, for the first time, fish farms produce half the fish we eat, up from less than a third in 2002. With wild-catch fisheries maxed out, any more increases in fish production will depend on farms.
Problems in the wild?

It is unclear from the FAO data whether fish farms are indirectly putting more pressure on wild stocks.

Many farmed fish eat fishmeal and oil, made from small species like sardines. The FAO says the tonnage of these species consumed has trebled since 1992, but does not say whether this is a consequence of fish farming, or because the fish are being used for other purposes.

In a parallel report, international fisheries pressure group Oceana charges that by relying on wild-caught species like sardines, which now constitute one third of world fisheries, fish farms are starving larger predators, including tuna, marine mammals and seabirds.

The FAO observes that the unrestricted competition between companies is a waste of energy: too many boats mean that fewer fish are caught per litre of boat fuel. Meanwhile, boat owners buy more powerful, less efficient engines to beat the competition.

World fisheries must prepare for climate change
FAO releases new "State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture" report
FAO 2 Mar 09;

2 March 2009, Rome - The fishing industry and national fisheries authorities must do more to understand and prepare for the impacts that climate change will have on world fisheries, says a new FAO report published today.

According to the latest edition of the UN agency's The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA), existing responsible fishing practices need to be more widely implemented and current management plans should be expanded to include strategies for coping with climate change.

"Best practices that are already on the books but not always implemented offer clear, established tools towards making fisheries more resilient to climate change," said Kevern Cochrane, one of SOFIA's authors. "So the message to fishers and fisheries authorities is clear: get in line with current best practices, like those contained in FAO's Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and you've already taken important strides towards mitigating the effects of climate change."

Vulnerable food systems and communities

Climate change is already modifying the distribution of both marine and freshwater species. Warmer-water species are being pushed towards the poles and experiencing changes in habitat size and productivity.

And climate change is affecting the seasonality of biological processes, altering marine and freshwater food webs, with unpredictable consequences for fish production.

For communities who heavily rely on fisheries, any decreases in the local availability of fish or increases in the instability in their livelihoods will pose serious problems.

“Many fisheries are being exploited at the top range of their productive capacity. When you look at the impacts that climate change might have on ocean ecosystems, that raises concerns as to how they'll hold up," said Cochrane.

Urgent efforts are needed to help fishery and aquaculture dependent communities to strengthen their resilience to climate change, especially those most vulnerable, he added.

Fishing's carbon footprint

Fisheries and aquaculture make a minor but significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions during fishing operations and transport, processing and storage of fish, according to today's report.

The average ratio of fuel to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for capture fisheries is estimated at about 3 teragrams of CO2 per million tonnes of fuel used. "That could be improved. Good fisheries management can substantially improve fuel efficiency for the sector," Cochrane said. "Overcapacity and excess fishing capacity mean fewer fish caught per vessel—that is, lower fuel efficiency—while competition for limited resources means fishers are always looking to increase engine power, which also lowers efficiency."

Compared to actual fishing operations, emissions per kilogram of post-harvest aquatic products transported by air are quite high, SOFIA adds. Intercontinental airfreight emits 8.5 kg of CO2 per kilogram of fish transported. This is about 3.5 times that for sea freight and more than 90 times that from local transportation of fish where it is consumed within 400 kilometres of catch.

New production figures

Total world fisheries production reached a new high of 143.6 million tonnes in 2006 (92 million tonnes capture fisheries, 51.7 million tonnes aquaculture). Of that, 110.4 million tonnes was used for human consumption, with the remainder going to non-food uses (livestock feed, fishmeal for aquaculture).

The production increases came from the aquaculture sector, which now accounts for 47 percent of all fish consumed by humans as food. Production in capture fisheries has levelled off and is not likely to increase beyond current levels.

Status of wild stocks

Nineteen percent of the major commercial marine fish stocks monitored by FAO are overexploited, 8 percent are depleted, and 1 percent is ranked as recovering from depletion, today's report indicates.

Around half (52%) rank as fully exploited and are producing catches that are at or close to their maximum sustainable limits.

Twenty percent of stocks fall into the moderately exploited or underexploited category.

Areas with the highest proportions of fully-exploited stocks are the Northeast Atlantic, the Western Indian Ocean and the Northwest Pacific.

SOFIA identifies overcapacity—a combination of too many boats and highly effective fishing technologies— as a key problem affecting fisheries today.

Progress in tackling this issue has been slow, it says, and "there has been only limited progress in mainstreaming precautionary and ecosystem approaches to fisheries, eliminating bycatch and discards, regulating bottom-trawl fisheries, managing shark fisheries and dealing with illegal fishing."

Other findings

SOFIA paints a clear picture of the importance of fishing and aquaculture in the developing world.

An estimated 43.5 million people are directly involved, either full or part time, in capture fisheries and aquaculture. Most (86%) live in Asia. An additional 4 million are engaged in the sector on an occasional basis. Factoring in employment in fish processing, marketing and service industries and including the families of all people employed directly or indirectly from fisheries and aquaculture, over half a billion people depend on the sector.

Fish provides more than 2.9 billion people with at least 15 percent of their average per capita animal protein intake. It contributes at least 50 percent of total animal protein intake in many small island developing states as well as in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, French Guiana, the Gambia, Ghana, Indonesia and Sierra Leone.

Both direct employment and jobs in related industries are likewise important for developing countries, while their revenues from fisheries exports earn have reached $24.6 billion annually.

The world's motorized fishing fleet totals around 2.1 million vessels. The vast majority (90%) measure under 12 meters in length. Some 23 000 are large-tonnage "industrialized" vessels. The nationality of several thousand of these is unknown—this “unknown” category has expanded in recent years in spite of global efforts to eliminate illegal fishing.

SOFIA also includes chapters on the occupational safety of fishers, seafood certification schemes, marine genetic resources, shrimp fishing, and the use of wild fish as seed and feed in aquaculture.

Discussions at FAO

Starting today, representatives of over 80 countries are gathering at FAO's Rome headquarters for the 28th session of the UN agency's Committee on Fisheries (COFI), where they will discuss the issues raised in SOFIA and the program of work for FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture Department.

Download the "The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2008" report