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Fisheries Centre research reports. Volume 24, number 3

University of British Columbia. Fisheries Centre

Globally, the production of fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO) has been reliant on dedicated fisheries since at least the 1950s. While these products formerly found diverse uses, they are now used almost entirely for livestock and aquaculture production (Tacon and Metian 2008). There has also been a growth in the practice of direct feeding of fish to aquaculture operations for various taxa (Funge-Smith et al. 2005). Both of these uses are for purposes other than direct human consumption (DHC) and have been criticized as wasteful and unethical (Naylor and Burke 2005; Tacon and Metian 2009b). On the other hand, the market possibility and complete use of all fisheries landings for DHC has been contested (Wijkström 2009, 2010). However, this debate has also been marked by a lack of clarity around what fish are used for fishmeal and fish oil production and for direct feeding, outside of a few major species that have come to characterize the sector, such as the Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens). Furthermore, as the fishmeal/oil sector is thought to represent close to 1/3 of global capture fisheries in recent years (Alder et al. 2008; Tacon and Metian 2009a), understanding its dynamics is important to guide future fisheries policy and fisheries research. We aim to characterize the role of non-DHC fisheries in global capture fisheries, including both reduction fisheries for fishmeal and oil and fisheries for ‘trash fish’ (i.e., direct feed). Thus, we provide a global coverage of reduction/feed fisheries for each fishing entity (i.e., fishing country or flag country) from 1950-2010, based on the reconstructed global catch database of the Sea Around Us (Pauly and Zeller 2016). This will enable us to analyze a sector of capture fisheries that is relatively poorly understood in its global extent and development, and permits the documentation of current trends within reduction fisheries. Additionally, our focus on the full time period back to 1950 enables us to develop an understanding of the use of fisheries landings almost since the beginning of post-WWII industrial fisheries.

Text

2017-08-18

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62707

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/