Fishing for food

Over many years our oceans hve been over fished.  That is where we have taken out more fish from the sea than have been replaced naturally, so the number of fish in the sea has fallen.  The results have been far fewer trawlers (fishing boats) going out into the sea to fish and the European Parliament setting down strict limits on the amount of fish (a quota) that can be caught. 

This can mean that many fishing boats are unable to go out to sea when they want to because they have already caught their limit of fish in a particular month.  It is expected that 90% of the world's fisheries will be exhausted (used up) within the next 40 years.  This is a big problem because it comes at a time when we are eating more fish than ever, for example the Chinese now eat twice as much as they did 15 years ago.

With fish in the sea being in much shorter supply there has been a move to growing or rearing fish on land or in fish farms.  It is predicted that by 2010 half of the fish the world eats will be from a fish farm.  We are already buying more than 50% of our fish from farms in supermarkets.  The most popular is farmed Salmon.

Salmon from the Atlantic Ocean is in danger and fish farming has made Salmon easily and cheaply available.  It provides a good source of protein and is a popular fish.  In the 1980s there were concerns about the welfare of the salmon grown in fish farms but this has changed.  Now they are organically certified and tend to be smaller, family businesses.  The word organic means they have more space, less stress and less likely to have any disease.

Farmed salmon are kept in cages that are sunk into the sea or lakes full of sea water until they reach the required weight.  Some of the largest cages could have 50,000 fish in but there are concerns about having this many fish in a limited space.  In the sea Salmon live on other fish like prawns and Krill, this helps give the fish their pink-orange colour.  When the Salmon are farmed they are given a food colouring.  The organic fish are fed shrimp shell left overs but the colour of the fish is much paler.

After Salmon the next most popular farmed fish are prawns but these come from poorer countries along the coasts of Latin America, South East Asia, Bangladesh and India.  Carp and Trout have been farmed in Europe for hundreds of years and England's first Carp farm recently opened in Devon.  Carp is a freshwater fish and it is extensively farmed around the world.  They are a sustainable fish and one that may well grow in popularity as sea fish decline.

There are over 1000 fish and shellfish farming businesses in the UK.  They work on 1500 sites and employ more than 3000 people.  Salmon is the most popular followed by trout.

Date

4/6/2008