Who is eating all the fish?

[redqueen]

The number of overfished stocks has tripled over the past 50 years, as fishing fleets push further afield to feed their growing populations.

by Eryk Bagshaw and the Visual Stories Team

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

Fish is the primary source of protein for billions of people worldwide. Nutritionally, it is far more efficient than meat, delivering calcium for the bones and Omega-3 for the brain.
But global stocks of fish are being plundered and driven to exhaustion.

More than 90 per cent of the world’s major marine fish stocks are classified by the United Nations as fully exploited, over-exploited, or significantly depleted.

The number of over-fished stocks has tripled over the past 50 years pushing fishing captains and their fleets further out to sea in search of profits from the $600 billion-a-year industry.

(More at link)

https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2023/fishing-rights/

[pwb]

1. Maybe one box of fillets for me in a year.

From the grocery store. McDonalds sells a lot of it would be my guess.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Frankenstein Fish is not a perfect substitute

Fish need exercise, room to grow. Farm raised have reproductive issues from what I've read.

[Diamond_Dog]

3. That was interesting

Thank you, redqueen.

I’ve not heard anything good about fish farming and try to always buy wild caught. But it looks more and more like wild caught will not be sustainable.

[getagrip_already]

4. sadly, a lot goes to non food purposes.....

It goes to fertilizer, drug manufacturing, oils, and other non food uses.

Menhaden specifically, which is a critical forage species for palegic species ranging from squid to whales, is being devastated for its oil content.

That is devastating stocks of striped bass and tuna.

Sure, lots of people eat fish products, but that isn't the whole story.

[Think. Again.]

5. The fact that...

...the global population has doubled over that same period might have something to do with this.

[hatrack]

6. What do farmed salmon eat? Other fish. They're carnivores.

And what makes up most food for farmed salmon? Fish meal, from species lower down the food chain. And if something can't go on forever, it won't.

[Diamond_Dog]

7. I have read

That they load farmed fish with antibiotics because they are jammed into a small space. Then you can just imagine the quality of that water they’re jammed into.

[hatrack]

8. Yes, the same pollution/parasite issues that flattened Chile's aquaculture, now in Iceland . . .

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/03/sea-lice-outbreak-icelandic-salmon-farm-welfare-disaster-footage-shows