ABSTRACT
Gorka Merino,1,* Manuel Barange2 and Christian Mullon3
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defi nes reduction fi sheries as fi sheries that are geared towards the reduction of the catch to fi shmeal and/or fi sh oil. These fi sheries are relatively recent. Excess of seasonal catches of herring and sardines started to be processed in northern Europe and North America at the beginning of the 19th century to obtain fi sh oil to produce non-food products such as soap and lubricants for machinery. Once the benefi t of fi shmeal as an inexpensive food supplement for animal feeds was realized, their demand increased. Fisheries began to target
1Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, PL1 3DH, Plymouth, UK/AZTI-Tecnalia, Marine Research Division, Herrera Kaia, Portualdea s/n, 20110 Pasaia, Spain. Email: gmerino@azti.es 2Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, PL1 3DH, Plymouth, UK. Email: m.barange@pml.ac.uk 3Unité de recherche Ecosystèmes d’Upwelling, Centre de Recherches Halieutiques, Avenue Jean Monnet, 34200 Sète, France. Email: christian.mullon@ird.fr *Corresponding author
anchovies and sardines worldwide, among other clupeoids, for reduction into fi shmeal, fi sh oil being its by-product. After the 1950’s, huge reduction fi sheries and fi shmeal production factories were developed in several countries such as the US, Norway, Peru, Japan (Watson et al. 2006). In the late 1980’s, the global production of marine fi sh dedicated to produce fi shmeal and oil peaked at more than 30 mt according to FAO estimates, which has remained relatively stable until the last years, and can be generally considered as the maximum catch that reduction fi sheries can sustainably extract from the global oceans. Therefore, the amount of raw material to produce fi shmeal is limited by marine ecosystems’ productivity and their capacity to sustain small pelagic fi sheries. However, according to global databases (Fig. 7.1), overall small pelagic fi sheries production has declined moderately since 2000. The conversion ratio of live fi sh into fi shmeal has been reduced, enabling production of fi shmeal to be maintained despite the decline of total small pelagic fi sheries production. However, further increases of fi shmeal and oil production are unlikely unless other species are used as raw material (Watson et al. 2006). Further comments on the historic development of reduction fi sheries, their fi shing methods, reduction process and a brief description of the ecological relevance of small pelagic fi sh are presented here.
