In writing this report a key question arises: howmany fish are caught each year? One expects the
number to be massive – the familiar sight of trawl nets full of fish being emptied on deck suggests
that many hundreds may be caught in just a
single catch. The numbers of land animals
slaughtered for food every year is known, since these are published by the Food and Agriculture
Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). These
show that 3 billion mammals and 57 billion birds
were killed for this purpose in 2008.
Unfortunately, FAO statistics on wild-caught and
farmed fish are given only in tonnages. Nor,
unfortunately, does the FAO publish mean
weights of fish, which would enable numbers to
be calculated from these tonnages.
The number of fish caught each year is an
important question for animal welfare assessment
because, as discussed earlier, most wild-caught
fish are killed (i.e. left to die) in ways that meet no
standard of humane slaughter. If not the FAO,
has anyone else tried to estimate the total number
of fish caught?
There are some estimates for particular species
and for the following cases the numbers are
huge. It has been reported that the number of
sandeels caught (sandeels are small fish that
burrow in the sand and are caught industrially for
reduction to fishmeal and fish oil) is around 100
billion in “a good year” (Johannesson et al, 2000).
On an even larger scale, it has been estimated
that the number of Peruvian anchovy, also largely
caught to manufacture fishmeal and fish oil, was
1.3 trillion (1,306 billion) in 1971 (Froese, 2001).
However, searches by the current author revealed
no estimate for the total number caught.
Despite the lack of official statistics on fish
capture numbers, is it possible to estimate them
from FAO fisheries capture tonnages and other
available data? Searches on the internet show
that, to varying degrees of accuracy and
representativeness, there is a significant amount
of fish size data around and average weights are
cited for many species e.g. on seafood marketing
and angling websites. As part of the project of
writing this report, the current author attempted
such a task in the following study.
19.1 Study to estimate numbers of
fish caught
There are three main parts to the estimate
presented in this study to estimate the numbers of
fish caught in global fishing each year (Mood and
Brooke, 2010):
(1) fish for which the FAO reports capture
tonnages in single species categories,
e.g. Atlantic mackerel (Scomber
scombus), and for which a mean weight
was estimated from available fish size
data
(2) fish for which the FAO reports capture
tonnages in multi-species categories, e.g.
Anchovies, etc. nei (Engraulidae), and for
which mean weights were estimated for
the largest and smallest relevant species
in each category
(3) fish for which the FAO reports capture
tonnages in totally general categories,
e.g. marine fishes nei, together with
categories for which the species are
given but for which a mean weight could
not be estimated.
expected links
http://www.greenpeace.org.nz/redlist/RedFishGuide.pdf
http://www.fishcount.org.uk/published/std/fishcountchapter19.pdf
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/salton/SaltonSea7.6MilFish.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_fish_get_killed_every_year
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