Seafood Increasingly Popular and Scarce

by Brian Halweil

People around the world ate about 156 million tons of seafood in 2004, the last year for which there are data.1 This is a relatively large jump from the preceding year—almost 9 million tons—about half of which was satisfied by a rebound in certain wild fish populations, with the other half representing continued rapid growth in fish farming.2 (See Figure 1.) (Since seafood is generally consumed fresh or within a few months of being caught, statistics on consumption and production are nearly identical.)

Since 1950, seafood consumption has jumped almost eight times.3 This rise in global consumption comes even as seafood becomes scarcer. In 2006, scientists tracking historical changes in the world’s major fish populations estimated that all major fish stocks could be commercially extinct—less than 90 percent of their historic levels—by the middle of this century if current trends continue.4

On average, each person ate three times as much seafood in 2004 as in 1950 (see Figure 2)—but the amount and type of seafood consumed vary widely.5 The Chinese consume about a fifth of the world’s seafood, eating per person roughly five times as much seafood as they did in 1961.6 Total Chinese fish consumption has increased more than 10-fold in that time.7 (See Figure 3.) Over the same period, U.S. seafood consumption jumped 2.5 times.8 The Japanese consume the most seafood per person, about 66 kilograms each year.9 In Europe, the average person eats about 26 kilograms a year, slightly more than the average Chinese does.10

For people in wealthy nations, seafood is an increasingly popular health food option; given its high levels of fatty acids and trace minerals, nutritionists recognize it as essential to the development and maintenance of good neurological function, not to mention reduced risk of cancer, heart disease, and other debilitating conditions.11 In poorer nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, people are also eating more fish, if they can afford it or can fish for it themselves. 12 For more than 1 billion people, mostly in Asia, fish supply 30 percent of the protein they consume, compared with just 6 percent worldwide.13

Consumers in Europe, the United States, and Japan favor larger, predatory fish, like tuna and cod, the populations of which are most endangered.14 Most salmon and shrimp, two other popular items, are now raised in farms that use several times more fish as feed than they actually produce.15

In contrast, poorer people tend to depend on smaller fish that are lower on the food chain, including herbivorous farmed fish like catfish, carp, and tilapia, as well as oysters, clams, mussels, and sea vegetables.16 In China, which raises 70 percent of the world’s farmed fish, fish farming accounts for nearly two thirds of total fish consumption and is dominated by such herbivorous species.17

With the depletion of wild fish schools, virtually all of the growth in the global catch today comes from farmed fish.18 Whereas wild harvests have stagnated over the last 10 years, fish farming’s output has more than doubled to 59.4 million tons, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the global harvest.19

Although farmers have been raising herbivorous fish in ponds for millennia, the relatively recent move toward raising tuna, salmon, striped bass, shrimp, and other carnivores in pens consumes a growing share of the world’s fish. Species like anchovy, herring, capelin, and whiting are reduced to feed for animals or fish farms. In 1948, only 7.7 percent of total landings turned into fishmeal and fish oil.20 Currently, 37 percent of global marine landings—about 32 million tons a year—is reduced to feed, eliminating an important historical and future source of human sustenance.21

Fish also sustain people as a livelihood, employing about 38 million people worldwide. 22 Of these, 95 percent are smaller fishers and fish farmers in Asia and Africa.23 Smaller vessels employ more people per ton of fish caught, and they also wield more exacting and less damaging fishing tools—hand lines rather than nets dragged across the bottom—a characteristic that will be important as countries try to maintain their fishing communities even as there are fewer fish to catch.24

Includes the following charts and graphs
World Fish Harvest, 1950-2004
World Fish Harvest Per Person, 1950-2004
Seafood Consumption in Top Four Countries or Region, 1961 and 2003

Notes
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