Millions would
struggle to eat
and earn enough
Around the world, 40 million people earn
their living directly from catching wild fish,
while another 19 million are employed in
aquaculture – fish-farming or growing
seafood in controlled conditions such as sea
pens and cages, lochs and ponds. But these
figures may hide the true extent of the
planet’s dependency on fishing. Along
coasts, estuaries and coral reefs, millions of
small-time fishers make a meagre wage from
fishing, or catch fish just to put food in their
families’ mouths. Some fishers don’t make
the stats, and neither do their catches. “A lot
of the small-scale catches are distributed in
informal markets, where they’re not
recorded,” says marine ecologist Dr Steven
Purcell at Southern Cross University in Co s
Harbour, Australia. His own studies suggest
that 71 per cent of those fishing for Trochus
sea snails in the Samoan islands eat them
themselves or give them away to friends and
neighbours. Seafood is a major source of
protein across Southeast Asia and islands in
the Indian and Pacific Oceans. So while in
Europe or the US we could eat more meat or
soy products to make up for lost protein, a
fishing ban could lead to food scarcity in
communities with li le land-based farming.
We can also envisage a black market
developing for fish, as there currently is for
beluga caviar in the US, where it’s banned.
Eggs from the endangered beluga sturgeon
are thought to be own in privately to top
Manha an chefs. In the case of a total fishing
ban, think less about caviar, more about
ordering canned tuna from dodgy websites.
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