Brussels, 05/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 5 March, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) published its latest (biannual) report on the global situation with fisheries and aquaculture which reveals that in 2005, 52% of the world's fish stocks had been fully exploited. 20% of stocks were moderately exploited, 17% were over-exploited, 7% depleted and only 1% were “recovering from depletion”. These figures have been more or less the same 15 years, but the FAO is concerned at the highly worrying state of species caught partly or exclusively in high seas areas- in other words outside national jurisdictions- such as oceanic sharks. Hake, cod, halibut, orange roughy, basking shark and bluefin tuna are amongst the most endangered species, even though these stocks, which are caught in Community waters, represent just a small proportion of total fish resources.
According to the initial estimates for 2005, the global total fisheries production has reached a level of nearly 142 million tonnes, which is over a million tonnes more than in 2004. China tops the table, with declared production of 47.5 million tonnes in 2004 (including 30.6 million tonnes of farmed fish). In 2004, caught and farmed production produced around 106 million tonnes of fish for consumption, making the apparent offer per head of population 16.6 kg (live weight equivalent), which is the highest ever recorded. This means that 75% of production is used to feed the population and the remaining proportion is used to prepare fish meal and oils (to feed cattle and farmed fish).
Global production of capture fisheries reached 95 million tonnes in 2004, with an initial market value of 84.9 billion dollars. The largest producers are China (16.9 million tonnes), Peru (9.6 million), the United States (5 million) and Chile (4.9 million tonnes). The country which tops the list for the European continent is Norway, in 10th place with 2.5 million tonnes of fish caught. The only recent change is that Chile has gone up a few places in the table (the country went from seventh place in 2003 to fourth place in 2004), due to fluctuations in anchovy catches. The north-west Pacific (21.6 million tonnes of fish) and the south-east Pacific (15.5 million tonnes) remain the most productive fishing zones, beating the Central-west Pacific, the north-west Atlantic (10,000,000 tonnes), the eastern Indian Ocean (the western Indian Ocean, the Central-Eastern Atlantic (3.4 million tonnes), the north-east Pacific and the north-west Atlantic (2.4 million tonnes). The FAO reports a continuous increase in catches in the north-west Atlantic and the north-east Pacific and notes that, for the first time since 1991, catches in the north-east Atlantic were below 10 million tonnes.
With a total production in the order of 10.7 million tonnes in 2004, Peruvian anchovies remain the clear leader of the 10 most-caught marine species. It beats Alaska pollack (2.7 million tonnes), blue whiting (2.4 million tonnes), skipjack tuna, Atlantic Herring (2 million), Spanish mackerel (2 million), Japanese anchovy, Chilean horse mackerel and capalin. The Atlantic cutlassfish came 10th.
Fish farming is experiencing high levels of growth, with annual production of 47.8 million tonnes. It currently supplies 43% of all fish eaten in the world, compared to 9% in 1980. China alone accounted for 70% of total fish farm production, compared to just 3.54% for Western Europe and 0.42% for central and eastern Europe. It is worth noting that the Netherlands come in fourth place on the list of the 10 countries of the world whose fish farming sector increased the most between 2002 and 2004. 55.6% of all farmed salmonids are produced in Western Europe (mainly in northern Western Europe) and carp predominated in central Europe and Eastern Europe (both in volume and in value). Carp production far outstrips production of all other groups of species, representing more than 40% (18.3 million tonnes) of total production of fish, crustaceans and molluscs in 2004. The most-farmed species was the Pacific Portuguese oyster (4.4 million tonnes), followed by three species of carp: silver carp (4,000,000 tonnes), grass carp (3.9 million tonnes) and koi carp (3.4 million tonnes). In terms of value, the farming of prawns took second place. In 2004, global production of seaweed stood at 18.9 million tonnes, 10.7 million tonnes of which were grown in China and 1.2 million tonnes in the Philippines. The production of aquatic plants is increasing rapidly (11.6 million tonnes in 2002).
At the end of 2004, the global fishing fleet counted some 4 million units. 86% of all decked vessels (vessels with one or more decks) were to be found in Asia, followed by Europe (7.8%), North America and Central America (3.8%), Africa (1.3%), Latin America (0.6%) and Oceania. (lc)