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Mar 14, 2024 · Per-capita values are obtained by dividing the original values by the population (either provided by FAO or by OWID). Source. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. Last updated.
- Overview
- What Does the Fishing Industry Look Like?
- Catching Fish at Sea
- A Rising Interest in Aquaculture
- Will It Take a Toll on the Environment?
Healthy fisheries may be the key to feeding ten billion people-if they're managed correctly.
If current population trends continue, experts estimate the world will need to double food production by 2050, and those same experts say fish are the answer.
“We're running out of options on land,” says Vera Agostini from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. “There's only so much we can take from the planet, so fisheries and aquaculture will be critical.”
In 2016, fisheries yielded 171 million tons of fish for consumption. By 2030, that number is expected to reach 201 million tons.
Earlier this summer, the FAO published a comprehensive overview of the fishing industry called The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture. It outlined the history of an industry they expect to play a critical role in meeting food consumption targets.
As a food source, fish can be a key source of protein. Just 150 grams of fish can provide the average adult with over half of their daily protein requirement. In developing countries with growing economies and individual wealth, like China, fish consumption is booming. In 2016, Europe, Japan, and the U.S. were consuming just under half the world's caught fish. By 2015, Asia was consuming two thirds of the world's caught fish.
Both a growing population and an increasingly wealthy one demand foods rich in protein and nutrition. A 2015 study published in the journal Food Security found that fish accounted for 10 percent of the world's food security.
The paper's authors, some former FAO analysts, wrote that they were making the case for fish to be increasingly added to the “overall debate and future policy about food security and nutrition.”
Other researchers have been more skeptical about how fish can become a more bountiful food supply, particularly fish that comes from the high seas.
A paper published last week in the journal Science Advances found that fishing done on the high seas (any region 200 miles offshore any land) plays a negligible role in ensuring global food security.
“Most of the fish are sold as an upscale food items,” says ecologist Enric Sala, a National Geographic Explorer who authored the study. “Small local operations don't fish in the high seas. The fishing on the high seas is conducted by larger industrial fleets.”
That's because, between fuel and labor costs, high seas fishing is expensive. In another paper published by Sala in Science Advances last June, a team of researchers found that as much as 54 percent of high seas fishing would be unprofitable were it not for government subsidies.
To reach the most expansive parts of the globe, fishing vessels generally come from wealthier nations. Eighty-five percent of high seas fishing is done by China, Spain, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
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Unlike wild fish, farm-raised fish are grown in fresh water or salt water pens.
In 2014, the World Bank published a report stating that, by 2030, 62 percent of the world's seafood will be farm-raised.
In their 2016 report, the FAO found that aquaculture already accounted for 47 percent of the seafood we consume.
A Nature study published in August of last year ambitiously outlined how aquaculture could potentially be scaled up to meet the world's demand for seafood without depleting ocean stocks.
A greater emphasis on fishing worries some environmental activists.
At sea, increasing the number of wild-caught fish has led to overfishing, or entirely depleted fisheries. Strict regulations on where fishers can fish and what they can catch has been effective, says NOAA. In 2017, the organization published a report finding that overfished stocks in U.S. waters remained low. It's a significant improvement, they say, from nearly 20 years ago when several commonly eaten species were almost fished to extinction.
Fishing nets can also harm the environment. Some accidentally ensnare animals like marine mammals. Trawls can tear up habitats like coral. And old fishing nets are one of the top sources of ocean pollution.
The U.N. also intends to increase the amount of protected areas in the ocean. While some MPAs allow fishing, others are completely restricted and have previously left industry and activists competing for the same space. Both Sala and Agostini say they hope MPAs can be used as a tool to improve the health of adjacent stocks, making them more lucrative.
Farming fish, instead of catching them wild, isn’t always the silver bullet it sometimes seems.
Some fish species cope with small, contained spaces better than others, and those that don't are prone to developing and spreading diseases.
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Capture fisheries production. In 2018, total global capture fisheries production reached the highest level ever recorded at 96.4 million tonnes - an increase of 5.4 percent from the average of the previous three years (Figure 1). link FIGURE 1.
Percentage of global fish catch allocated to major hydrological/river basin 58 15. Production trends and the relative contribution to the global catch 59 16. Total and per capita apparent fish consumption by region and economic grouping, 2017 70 17. Projected fish production, 2030 166 18. Projected fish trade for human consumption 172 19.
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Feb 15, 2024 · We find that per capita consumption of aquatic foods has increased significantly at the global scale, but the human aquatic food trophic level (HATL), i.e., the average trophic level of...
How much fish do people eat? Some countries in the world eat close to 100 kilograms of seafood per person each year. Others average only a few kilograms. In the charts here, we see the average per capita consumption of fish and seafood across the world. 6 The highest seafood consumers are countries including Iceland, the Maldives, and Hong Kong ...
Jun 11, 2020 · Total fish production is set to increase to 204 million tons in 2030, up 15% from 2018, with aquaculture's share growing from its current 46%, according to the new report. That growth is around half the increase recorded in the previous decade, and translates into an annual per capita fish food consumption is forecast to reach 21.5 kilograms by ...
