Five not so easy pieces : globalization of fishing and seafood markets

Over the past 60 years, the world’s marine fisheries have more than quadrupled their total output from 20 million t to around 80 million t. Yet, a closer examination of the catch statistics, as conducted in this thesis, reveals that this increase was achieved by geographical expansion of the global fisheries from the coastal waters off North Atlantic and Northwest Pacific to the waters in the Southern Hemisphere and into the high seas. The globalization of fisheries coincides with the globalization of seafood markets and an analysis of trade statistics carried out in this dissertation indicates net flows of marine fisheries resources into the markets of the EU, Japan and USA with their “consumption footprints” covering most of the world’s ocean. Recognizing the global limit to growth, various international initiatives have been launched in recent years to improve the state of world’s marine fisheries. This thesis examines fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization and its failure to reach an agreement, despite a general consensus that some forms of fisheries subsidies contribute to overcapacity and overfishing. The failure of the WTO negotiations exposes the difficulties of overcoming the status quo in fisheries. This thesis argues that improvements in our understanding of the states of world fisheries and their values and economic contributions are critical to achieving meaningful political actions. As such, the thesis explores two approaches for enhancing existing fisheries statistics. First, a new methodology for predicting the values of seafood across various national markets was developed, allowing improved economic evaluations of fisheries resources and the fisheries industry. Second, a recently developed catch-reconstruction method was applied to the fisheries of Japan to examine the scale of previously ignored components of marine fisheries catch even in countries where fisheries are generally considered to be data-rich. The two approaches presented, jointly, should enable the development of a more comprehensive picture of the state of marine fisheries which can then be presented to the public; a picture that, combined with other efforts by fisheries scholars around the world, I hope, will speak loud enough to initiate the transition to sustainable fishing.Science, Faculty ofResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forGraduat

Global maps of the growth of Japanese marine fisheries and fish consumption

Globally, consumers are increasingly relying on goods and services produced in other countries. This is particularly true for fish products, nearly 40% of world fish production is currently traded globally. Thus, there now exists a clear disconnect between resource harvesters and resource consumers. This research is concerned with an assessment of fisheries exploitation patterns based on consumption as a complement to assessment based on fisheries catch. Such research requires an examination of two primary modes of fish acquisition: the operation of a country's domestic fishing fleets, i.e., its landings and the purchase of fish caught by foreign fleets, i.e., its fish import. Japanese fish consumption will be used as a case study. Japan has traditionally been one of the world's largest consumers of fish products, with considerable dependence on foreign fisheries resources, initially through the operation of its distant water fleets, and later through the purchase of foreign catches as import. Global maps of Japanese trade statistics were constructed in terms of where catch were likely to have been taken, through a comparison with existing world, landings maps. By combining Japan's trade maps with Japan's catch maps, one can then assess the spatial and temporal patterns of Japanese fish consumption. Examination of the consumption maps indicate that despite the reduction of its distant water fleets, Japan maintains high level consumption throughout the world oceans via its increased reliance on the import of foreign catches. Moreover, maps of Japan's consumption relative to the world catch reveal that Japan remains the most prominent consumer of fisheries resources from many regions of the world, particularly in the South Pacific and the waters around Antarctica. Such maps provide an alternative measure of the level of fisheries exploitation exerted by the demand of fish importing countries. Although the responsibility for ensuring the sustainability of the resource use is on the resource-extracting nation, an understanding of the exploitation pressure exerted by the demand of the importing countries is evidently in their best interest, as it dictates the long-term security and stability of the supply. The mapping of consumption undertaken in my research may lead to more thorough analyses of this issue.Science, Faculty ofResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forGraduat