Who is to Blame for Overfishing?

The Wanderer and his Shadow
4 min readJun 5, 2019

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There are many warnings of the depletion of fish stocks due to overfishing, but where to put the blame? First, it is important to make a distinction between total fish and captured fish, as in theory it is only captured fish that deplete global stocks, while fish spawned from aquaculture represent a sustainable source. For example, China, by far the leader in fish processing at 1.6 billion tonnes from 1950–2017 (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations) spreads that value fairly evenly over freshwater aquaculture (31%), marine aquaculture (36%), and capture (32%) with brackish aquaculture accounting for the final 1%.

The map at the top shows the quantiles of the natural log of total production (the log is taken because the distribution of total production over this period is heavily skewed to the right: a few countries produce the majority of fish). Perhaps unsurprisingly, countries that are coastal (more access to fish), richer (more capability), and/or more populous (more mouths to feed) tend to have greater production. In addition, East and South (and Southeast) Asia have a greater fishing tradition.

*Russia includes Soviet Union values from 1950–1991.

Looking at the FAO data from 1950–2015, (fish data is available up to 2017, but population data is currently not), nine countries have reported over 160 million tonnes of harvested fish from capture. The tenth country, Thailand, has captured 112 million, and South Korea, the eleventh, less than 100 million. Ten countries thus account for 60% of total captured fish caught over this span. Yet even though China has the most captured fish, they also have taken by far the most sustainable approach regarding capture: its 32% capture of total quantity is well below that of Indonesia at 57% and India at 65%. All other countries in the top ten are above 80% with Peru producing almost exclusively captured fish.

Yet to look only at volume is not enough, since China and India have substantially larger populations than all the other countries. Indeed, China and India are the two countries on the list with less than 0.01 tonnes of fish per person per year (t/p/yr), while Norway, Peru, and Chile, the three countries with by far the lowest populations on the list all sit at over 0.2 t/p/yr, with Norway at a staggering 0.6. Even if a lot of this is for export, one would have to suggest that they are taking far more than their fair share.

Looking at the longer term trends about the mean is useful because it is a fairly straightforward way to see which of the periods (earlier: 1950–1975, middle: 1976–1995, and later: 1996–2015) are above and below the mean and by how much. For example, Chile’s early fishing industry was very small, grew substantially in the middle period, and has since come down from that, though it is still higher than the overall average. Japan’s early and middle periods steadily increased before a marked drop in captured tonnage in the period closest to the present. The general principle is to say that if it is becoming more evident that overfishing may be depleting fishing stocks, which countries are now making more of an effort to reduce their environmental footprint on this score? Japan and Russia have reduced their catch numbers to the greatest extent, whereas those of China and Indonesia have increased the most by proportion.

The question of who is at fault for overfishing is dependent on a number of factors. However, it should start with the top ten countries by capture volume, which account for 60% of all recorded fish captures since 1950. The most straightforward argument might be to base things solely on volume. After all, the more fish caught, the less fish there is left in the water to be caught in the future and/or spawn the next generation. In that case, China, Japan, Russia, and Peru are the main culprits.

However, it could also be argued that a “fair” share of fish is represented better by fish per capita rather than total fish. On that score, China and India have the greatest claim to fairness of the top ten producers, whereas Norway, Peru, and Chile could be said to have captured far more than they should . In terms of sustainable practices, it can also be said that China is far ahead of all other countries, with capture accounting for less than a third of total production, and Indonesia and India also performing well on that metric.

On the other hand, China and Indonesia have also substantially increased their volumes over the last 20 years, while Japan and Russia have made the greatest cuts in their capture volumes. Therefore it can also be argued that China, Indonesia, and to a lesser extent India have all failed to heed the recent warnings of overfishing as heightening the stresses on wild fish populations. The laying of blame on specific countries is therefore dependent on how one poses the question, but it is difficult to argue otherwise than these top ten capture countries being at the forefront of fish stock depletion.

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