China is the world’s largest seafood producer and consumer, according to a study published in the October issue of National Geographic.
The world’s most populous country consumes 694 million metric tons of seafood annually, in terms of primary production, followed by Japan at 582 million metric tons and the United States at 348.5 million metric tons.
Dubbed “SeafoodPrint,” the ongoing study is being conducted by University of British Columbia fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly and National Geographic fellow Enric Sala, with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts and National Geographic.
The study ranks nations’ impact on the marine environment by measuring the amount of seafood they produce and consume, but the type of fish is also taken into account. According to the study’s authors, measuring the amount of “primary production,” or the species at the bottom the marine food chain required to make a pound of a given type of fish, paints a more accurate picture of how different nations exploit the oceans than simply measuring total production.
“The problem is, every fish is different,” Pauly told National Geographic. “A pound of tuna represents roughly a hundred times the footprint of a pound of sardines.” He added that the quantities of seafood consumed by China, Japan and the United States are not just extremely large but also fundamentally unsustainable.
National Geographic also quoted University of Washington fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn, who has a much more optimistic outlook on the health of the oceans. “Daniel is fond of showing a graph that suggests that 60 to 70 percent of the world’s fish stocks are overexploited or collapsed,” he said. “The Food and Agriculture Organization’s analysis and independent work I have done suggests that the number is more like 30 percent.”
The National Geographic story is available on its website. The story was also picked up by the Washington Post and Canada’s National Post.
The October issue of National Geographic also includes a cover story about the Gulf oil disaster and its impact on the marine environment.
