There’s another issue, arguably worse — seafood consumption is now being recommended, at up to 8 ounces per person, per week. The theory is that it reduces pressure on land use for meat and poultry, but that theory also includes an increase in consumption.
Science Daily: Of that waste, they say that 330 million pounds are lost in distribution and retail, 573 million pounds are lost when commercial fishers catch the wrong species of fish and then discard it (a concept called bycatch) and a staggering 1.3 billion pounds are lost at the consumer level.
The overall breakdown of causes of waste is:
-51-63 percent consumer waste
-16-32 percent bycatch
-13-16 percent distribution
Note the bycatch figure. Net fishing produces a mass of unwanted catch, over double the useful commercial catch. This is the “collateral damage” of fishing, and its effects on the marine ecology, which supports the fish people eat, has long been a controversial subject. According to figures for the 1990s cited by the FAO, the sheer numbers of fish caught and lost through bycatch are astronomical.
The result, of course, is to trash marine ecologies. Fishing net damage, which can penetrate ocean floors to 6cm (2 inches) deep, is also disturbing marine biota at the lower levels, affecting the food chain by implication.
The protein issue — wishful diets and demand vs facts and creeping collapse
The new, hopelessly out of date, wisdom is that seafood can reduce pressure on land farming and provide more protein at a better cost. Demand for protein in emerging economies and the West’s whimsical dietary regimes is driving up prices, putting a huge strain on production while simultaneously driving land clearance, uneconomic consumption metrics, and dietary debates.
Put it this way — if it takes 12lb of topsoil to produce a loaf of bread, how much topsoil does it take to produce a cow? Obviously, a lot more. The deteriorating soils of the world can’t really deliver the demand.
The demand issue is driving policy and the new seafood diet ideas, but the way the demand is expressed is itself a problem. If the world’s expected 10 billion people in 2050 eat half a pound of fish a week, you can expect the entire seafood supply chain to fall to bits in a few years. The depleted oceans simply can’t produce that much edible material. As it is, natural fish stocks only rebound, if at all, after many years of conservation.
The problem is that the big picture doesn’t support the demand model, either. This study doesn’t include any analysis of the change in the oceans due to acidification, anoxic (low oxygen) zones, lower food chain harvesting like krill fishing, (krill is a foundation of the macro food chain), and other local and global shifts in ocean dynamics.
As you can see from the map, many traditional fishing grounds in the U.S., Europe and Asia are affected by the spread of anoxic conditions. These areas used to be major fishing grounds. The crash in fish populations, caused by overfishing and 20th-century mismanagement, was a body blow to fishing businesses which effectively annihilated both the industry as well as the fish.
Most of the deep ocean is marine desert. It doesn’t support a lot of fish except during migrations. The now-anoxic traditional fishing grounds, not very surprisingly, were the main drag for fish numbers. Not a lot is being done to address or undo the damage to these inshore wastelands, so we not only need more fish; we need somewhere to put them. “Sea regeneration” isn’t exactly hitting the headlines much. Add to this that anoxic seas were behind one of the biggest mass extinctions in history, the Permian extinction, and it’s a not very encouraging panorama of total failure of marine management, on every level.
Unless this issue is properly addressed, and actual production capability, like trillions of cultured fish fry released into the oceans, are brought in to resolve the impasse, the situation will get a lot worse. Unless we stop using the oceans as a gigantic garbage dump full of toxins, the food won’t even be safe to eat. Who knows what sort of compounds, viruses, and dissolved metals are working their way up the food chain now, let alone in future?
I don’t eat seafood. I loathe the taste, and distrust the supply chain intensely. Modern fish look even more unsanitary than free range commuters. Obviously, this issue, like all the others, will be mismanaged to death and donated to future generations. Nice going, jerks.
I’m looking forward to a follow-up study on the effects of total incompetence on global environmental management — a comparison between what could be, and what is. It’ll make Britannica look like a post-it note.
