Global fishing Flashcards

1
Q

“Since 1961 the annual global growth in fish consumption has been twice as high as population growth,

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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

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2
Q

Fish as Food

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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

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3
Q

A Brief History of Fishing

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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

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4
Q

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

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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

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5
Q

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

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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

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6
Q

Most fishing in the world is small-scale and low- tech.

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But large, high-tech vessels are able to efficiently exploit even very remote areas of the world’s oceans

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7
Q

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

A

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)

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8
Q

2016 Major Producer Countries

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China 15.2M tonnes
Indonesia 6.1M
USA 5M
UK 0.7M

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9
Q

2016 Major Capture Production

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Alaska pollock 3.5M tonnes
Peruvian Anchoveta 3.4M tonnes
Skipjack tuna 2.8M tonnes

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10
Q

Alaska Pollock Theragra chalcogramma - the world’s ‘generic fish’

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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

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11
Q

Peruvian Anchoveta Engraulis ringens - among the most abundant fish species in the world

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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

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12
Q

UK Fisheries

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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

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13
Q

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

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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

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14
Q

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

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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

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15
Q

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.

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Tickler et al. (2018) Far from home: Distance patterns of global fishing fleets. Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar3279

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16
Q

Is >50% of the ocean really fished?

On a 0.01 ̊ grid, the global footprint of fishing is ~4% of the ocean area
This is more comparable to agricultural land use estimates, which are at 1/12 ̊ resolution, and which account for fraction of farmed land within each grid cell
Diffuse impacts likely spread beyond these smaller cells, but could be more directly quantified
Nonetheless, it is unarguable that some areas of the ocean are extremely heavily fished

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Amoroso et al. (2018) Comment on ‘Tracking the global footprint of fisheries’. Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aat6713

17
Q

High resolution data for bottom trawling only in 24 continental shelf and slope regions globally
Combined satellite vessel monitoring (VMS) data with logbook data
Proportion of seabed trawled varied from 0.4% to 80.7% of area
Overall, 14% of the 7.8 million km2 study area was trawled

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Everyone agrees that fishing is widespread in the world’s oceans
Everyone agrees that all forms of fishing have some ecological impacts
The impacts of bottom trawling in particular are well understood and uncontroversial

18
Q

Bottom trawling is the most widespread human activity affecting seabed habitats

Bottom trawling:
resuspends sediments; reduces topographic complexity and biogenic structures; reduces faunal biomass, numbers, and diversity; selects for communities dominated by fauna with faster life histories; produces energy subsidies in the form of carrion

These effects lead to changes in community production, trophic structure, and function
Recovery after trawling depends on recruitment of new individuals, growth of surviving biota, and active immigration from adjacent habitat

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Meta-analysis to assess the effect of bottom trawling on benthic macroinvertebrates
Combined with a meta-analysis to estimate recovery rates of seabed biota

Hiddink et al. (2017) Global analysis of depletion and recovery of seabed biota after bottom trawling disturbance. PNAS, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618858114

19
Q

Trawl gears removed 6–41% of faunal biomass per pass Recovery times post trawling were 1.9–6.4 y

Otter trawls caused the least depletion, removing 6% of biota per pass and penetrating the seabed on average down to 2.4 cm

Hydraulic dredges caused the most depletion, removing 41% of biota and penetrating the seabed on average 16.1 cm

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Everyone agrees that fishing on the high seas has increased
Everyone agrees that fishing has placed significant pressures on large pelagic species (e.g. sharks, tunas and billfishes)

20
Q

Remote reefs and seamounts are the last refuges for marine predators across the Indo-Pacific

> 1000 midwater BRUVS (baited remote underwater video system) used to survey pelagic predators

Species richness, mean predator body size, and shark abundance modelled as a function of human pressure

Body size and shark abundance were strongly affected by human pressures

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Letessier et al., 2019

Blue shark, rainbow runner, mahi-mahi, black marlin

Mean body size sharply increased at distances >1250km from the nearest market

Shark abundance also increased beyond this threshold

Remaining predator refuges are thus very remote from human settlements

This indicates the expanding range of fishing influence

21
Q

Are tuna at risk of disappearing?

Tuna is one of the ‘Big 5’ fish species most consumed in the UK (also includes cod, salmon, haddock, prawns)
All tuna consumed in the UK is imported, with key source countries being Ghana, Seychelles, Mauritius, Spain, and Thailand
UK consumers purchased nearly 300M servings of tuna in 2016

A

1.5M tonnes yellowfin tuna and 2.8M tonnes skipjack tuna in 2016

Pons et al., 2016 Effects of biological, economic and management factors on tuna and billfish stock status

Catches have increased enormously since the start of major fisheries in the 1950s
Catches of some species have declined in recent years Does that indicate collapse and possible extinction?

Catch is NOT abundance
Changes in catch can result from changes in abundance
They can also result from changes in management, consumer preferences, economic drivers, etc.
How many major tuna stocks are actually overfished?

22
Q

Some tuna stocks are clearly overfished and poorly managed, and we should be concerned
Should we be worried about tuna?
Many tuna stocks are well-managed and within biologically safe limits

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x-y axes

x - stocks
y - overfishing

Most tuna are not overfished and have high stocks