The Importance of Developing Nations & Developing Data in the Seafood Industry
Recently the Fishcoin Team was asked by Edith Espejo of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to clarify one of the data points in our materials and its source. It was a statistic stating that 54% of seafood emanates from developing nations. Was it volume or value? We quickly clarified that it was a statistic from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and it was the value of seafood exports, and we use it to demonstrate that seafood is not only an important source of protein it is also an important source of income for developing nations. However, what about volume? I couldn’t find that statistic. This raises some very important issues with statistics, the data behind them, and how we address those challenges in the seafood industry.
Diving in to the FAO’s 2016 report on the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report there are a number of tables and figures that detail the production statistics by country of marine capture fisheries, inland waters capture fisheries, and aquaculture for the top producing nations. Using the United Nation’s World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) approach to classifying nations, I was able to classify these countries into developed and developing.
In 2014 the top 25 producer nations for marine capture fisheries represented 82.1% of the global marine capture production. Of that figure, developing nations accounted for 77% of the catch. Of the top 16 producer nations for inland waters capture fisheries that represented 80.2% of the global inland catch, 100% were developing nations.
In the same year for the aquaculture of animals and plants, the top 25 producer nations, representing 97.1% of global aquaculture production, 96.5% of production by these top producing countries were developing nations.
When added together, of the top producer nations for marine capture, inland waters capture, and aquaculture, developing nations accounted for 89.2% of production by volume.
However, how accurate are these figures and where do governments capture the data? Firstly, lets be fair, seafood is difficult. There could be more that 12,000 species consumed by humans according to the FAO — compared to other meats where a handful of species make up 95% of their production. It is also highly perishable and is often, salted, dried, processed and frozen so if you are collecting data after processing you need to estimate what the equivalent live weight was when the animals or plants came out of the water.
In developed nations, where the reporting of catch or production statistics is often a requirement of a permit or license to fish, farm or process seafood, and where monitoring, compliance and surveillance (MCS) measures are in place, domestic production statistics would be relatively accurate. However in developing nations, there is often no requirement, enforcement, and/or resources available to gather catch or production data from fishers and fish farmers. Volume and value data is often only collected at the point of export or import.
For example, in Indonesia, one of the world’s largest producers of seafood by volume and value, the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries receives logbooks from only an estimated 5% of fishermen. The catch per unit effort (CPUE) data fisheries scientists get from logbooks is critical for management. The information about how many boats went fishing over how many days and what they caught gives them an indication of the population size of a fish species in the sea, and over time, whether they are increasing, stable or decreasing. It can also help governments allocate quotas to fishermen. Quotas can be something the fishermen own, can lease, or sell. It can also be used for advance selling and raising capital.
However it is not just about the abundance of data, it is also about the precision and the accuracy of the data. Although it may be useful to know from which family of fish the fishermen are catching, it is necessary to know the species. So knowing a fish is from the family Lutjanidae is useful, but it is also important to know whether it is a Lutjanus argentimaculatus (Mangrove Red Snapper) or a Lutjanus erythropterus (Crimson Snapper). And although useful, common names are not as common as you might think. The Mangrove Red Snapper is also known as Creek Red Bream, the Stuart Evader, Dog Bream, Purple Sea Perch, Red Bass, Red perch, Red Reef Bream, River Roman or Rock Barramundi. Further, it is also important to collect data on the sex, length, number of eggs etc. of adult animals for improved management of the adult spawning stock.
Even if one is precise, accuracy is also critical. In one study of fisheries officers responsible for recording the landings of fish at ports in Indonesia, when tested with a table of fish, the officers, known as enumerators, recorded 55% of the species incorrectly. Management decisions made from inaccurate data may be worse than those made from no data at all.
It is therefore critical for improved management of the stocks of fish that 1 in 10 people on the planet are reliant upon for their livelihoods, and that we are all dependent upon for protein, that we get more data, more precision, and more accuracy. This is where technology can help, both with the logging of a fisherman’s catch, training for improved precision and accuracy, and the incentive to enter data. Technologies such as mFish and Fishcoin that we, at Eachmile Technologies, are developing.
