
River fishing in Ontario, Canada. Photo from Pxhere.
The Sea Around Us has published the first product in a massive undertaking that started in 2022: reconstructing the world’s freshwater fisheries catches.
In a recent Fisheries Centre Research Report (FCRR), the initiative based at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries presents, for the first time, reconstructions of the catch of inland or freshwater fisheries for all 10 provinces and three territories of Canada, for the U.S. state of Minnesota and the 10-member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN.
These catch reconstructions, like the previous reconstruction of the marine fisheries catches of the world’s maritime countries performed by the Sea Around Us, are required because the catch statistics submitted to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) by its member countries are incomplete.
These ‘official’ statistics do not include discarded fish and usually ignore the catch of subsistence and recreational fisheries, the latter being an issue far worse inland than in marine fisheries.
In the case of Canada, for example, only commercial fisheries statistics are reported to the FAO, even though they make up a small fraction of overall freshwater catches, which are overwhelmingly dominated by recreational catches, that is, fish killed for sport.
Although not representative of the bulk of what is caught, the freshwater commercial fishing sector in Canada alone peaked at 12 billion individual fish killed per year in the early 1960s. As is the trend with global marine fisheries, overfishing and environmental factors have led to a steady decline in catches, now amounting to around 2 billion individual fish killed per year. For reference, Canada killed an estimated 860 million farmed land animals for food in 2023.
The report found that commercial fishing has also declined in Minnesota, while trends were more difficult to assess in the 10 ASEAN countries evaluated, where catches are radically underreported in nine of the countries.
“The importance of data collection is often underappreciated. The work can be both tedious and intellectually demanding. Collecting reliable data is not just a matter of counting stuff, but often requires sophisticated extrapolation and inference from what can actually be counted,” Drs. Dale Jamieson and Jennifer Jacquet, from New York University’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, wrote in the report’s foreword. “Without good data, it is difficult to make good policy.”
This new FCRR is the first of a series that will document the world’s inland fisheries catches. The goal is to establish a baseline which, jointly with the Sea Around Us’ marine catch reconstructions, can provide a realistic account of the fish and invertebrates that have been extracted from the global ocean and the Earth’s inland waters. This should improve not only our evaluation of their contribution to our food security and livelihoods but also of their impact on marine and freshwater biodiversity and animal welfare.
“The importance and sustainability of freshwater fisheries remain largely unclear, primarily due to a lack of comprehensive data,” Dr. William Cheung, director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and a member of the Sea Around Us Advisory Board, wrote in the Director’s Foreword. “This report documents the start of this initiative and outlines the methodologies developed and applied to diverse case studies, setting the stage for future global application.”
Cheung noted that even though freshwater fisheries are vital for the survival of entire communities in many regions around the world, freshwater ecosystems and fisheries are also being seriously threatened by human activities, including over-exploitation, pollution, climate change, competing water uses, and invasive species.
“Despite this, freshwater fisheries have not received the same level of attention and research as marine fisheries. By addressing this gap, the Sea Around Us aims to make significant contributions, similar to those achieved in marine fisheries catch reconstructions. This task is undoubtedly more challenging due to the fragmented and localized nature of freshwater fisheries, but the methodologies presented in this report demonstrate a robust framework for overcoming these obstacles,” he added.
The FCRR presents a new method for estimating numbers of individuals from tonnage, as fish and aquatic invertebrates represent far and away the greatest number of kinds of animals being killed by humans for commercial use.
A previous report estimated between 0.68 and 1.97 trillion individuals were killed by marine fisheries only in 2007. Another published study estimated that in 2018, 250 to 408 billion individual animals from more than 408 species were farmed in aquaculture.
Thus, this new approach to catch reconstructions is “an important step in improving our relationships with fish and aquatic invertebrates,” Jacquet and Jamieson wrote. “Whales and other marine mammals have traditionally been counted as individuals rather than in volumes or weights and this may have played a role in changing global attitudes toward these animals.”
To read the full report “Reconstruction of Freshwater Fisheries Catches: Canada, Minnesota (USA), and ASEAN Countries” follow this link.