Post 2: Forage Fish - Fish Farm Feed Stats

See the previous post for this fish feed series: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/08/forage-fish-fish-farm-feed-stats.html.

This post is about trying to quantify just how responsible fish farms are for fishing down feed fish that should go to feeding third world humans rather than food for fish sold to first world mouths. Examples, are the Jack Mackerel decline off Chile, and now, the decline of anchovy off Peru, a story that is current in 2016. Look at my post on Fish Farm Bad News Bites: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/fish-farm-news-bites-2016-almost-too_3.html. I found 600 bad news stories in the global press from July 1, 2015, to July 1, 2016. Hard to believe.

Here is the graph of decline of Jack Mackerel, at its peak some 100M MT caught per year off Chile: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/08/jack-mackerel-fish-farms-buffalo.html.

Since the Bad News Bites 2015 to 2016 post, my 2016 post includes more than 100 negative global news stories about the fish farm/seafood industry, in one month, no less: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/07/news-bites-farmed-salmonseafood.html.

Now, in this, I consider the results of the Sea Around Us study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Around_Us_(organization).

Their work will allow me to quantify just what the Norwegian-style fish farms, Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood are responsible for killing ocean forage fish to feed to fish farm fish. This is the issue of sustainability. I aim to quantify how much blame they deserve.

Here is some lead in text: 


"In 2016, members of Sea Around Us, using reconstructed global catch data that combine officially reported landings data with comprehensive estimates of unreported landings and discards, documented that, from 1950-2010, global catches were around 50% higher than reported data suggest. Furthermore, total catches seem to be declining faster from their peak catch in the mid-1990s than reported data would suggest. The good news is that the discrepancy between reported data and estimated total catches is decreasing in more recent years, meaning that the comprehensiveness of data reported by countries seems to be improving.
Sea Around Us also communicates to broad audiences to convey the urgency to:

• Reduce excess fishing capacity (much of which is being ‘exported’ to developing countries).
• Eliminate damaging subsidies and create extensive networks of marine protected areas.
• Reconsider the current model of carnivorous aquaculture.
• Refocus fisheries to the small-scale sectors that are crucial to national food security concerns in developing countries."

I will be reading science for the next while to give you some hard stats on the issue.