Fishing: The Last Human Hunt
For millennia fishers (a.k.a. fishermen) have caught fish in the world’s oceans. Across much of these hundreds of human generations, the world has known the oceans for being synonymous with abundance. Then, in the geological blink of an eye, species began disappearing. Wild Atlantic Salmon was nearly wiped from existence. Immediately afterwards wild Atlantic Cod became extremely scarce. The Atlantic Ocean went from being the breadbasket of the world’s seafood supply to being nearly depleted.
Why? Humans became extremely efficient hunters. As a species, we went from catching cod and other fish in hundreds of wooden 30ft boats capable of holding 10,000lbs of fish at a time to thousands of steel 100+ft fishing vessels capable of holding 100,000lbs at a time. In short, fishing industrialized and the ocean became a globalized economic engine.
This globalized stage changed everything about the seafood industry. It led to efficiency but also to commoditization and competition. The question being asked no longer was ‘what seafood products can we access’, instead it became ‘what prices can we get for all seafood products’. Consumption rose rapidly and inversely populations of wild fish diminished. As fish populations decreased in the ’80s and ’90s seafood prices rose dramatically, making seafood one of the most expensive food categories in the world. But this trend stopped in the early 2000s, where counterintuitively, seafood prices began to stabilize and prices for some species items went down.
Again, what happened? Like any commoditized product with a finite supply, prices should’ve continued increasing, making seafood an unaffordable luxury to most. The secret came in the form of seafood’s answer to animal husbandry: aquaculture (a.k.a. fish farms). Aquaculture went from producing <10% of the world’s seafood in the 1990s to >50% of the world’s seafood today. Combine this with continued automation and upgrading of fishing fleets and the price of seafood has continued to remain accessible to most.
This shifting dynamic with aquaculture has changed the conversation around seafood. ‘Wild-caught’ fish is increasingly being marketed as a luxury in restaurants and grocery stores. Worldwide catch limits and licensed fishing methods were instituted at a level previously unseen and countries like Canada, Norway, Barbados, South Korea, Iceland, Palau have strictly enforced compliance. With these catch limits at play, wild-supply has been more limited than ever. For seafood items that have yet to be successfully farmed at scale (a.k.a. farmed at a cost lower than the cost of fishing), the pressure is on for those who own the right to fish to lower their costs.
Fishing provides work for roughly 40 million people today but the numbers aren’t increasing — they’re decreasing. Aquaculture produces equivalent volumes of seafood with 25% of the labour force required in fishing. And for those working in fishing, they aren’t getting younger. The average age of fishers in Alaska has risen from 40 years old to 50 years old in a decade and fewer people are entering the industry every year. Automation looms around the corner. Boats are beginning to captain themselves.
With all of these prospects, does it look like wild fishing will diminish entirely? Not likely. However, it is likely that wild fish will become further romanticized and increasingly differentiated. Perhaps wild fish will even become de-commoditized. Inevitably more and more species of fish will be successfully farmed at scale, further driving down the cost of seafood to below the cost that we see in beef and other meats today. And with all of this in mind perhaps we’re on the way to a more sustainable future.
