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Sustainable seafood

Resilience after Covid-19

COVID-19 has exposed the vulnerability of a globalized fish market. China is the largest importer, processor and transporter of seafood globally. When global shipping had to be shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, it drastically harmed fishing industries small and large that are all collected through the global market. Lobster fishers in southern Florida stopped fishing due to lack of demand. Florida lands 6 million pounds of lobster and half of that would go to China. Other fisheries such as the Scottish Salmon Producers Organization (SPPO) which farms salmon, are attempting to find new markets for their already produced fish. Other countries that import seafood from China such as Indonesia, have drastically reduced the amount and type of seafood they are purchasing. Indonesia stopped all imports of live fish and non frozen seafood form China. To build resilient and sustainable seafood fishers, the best actions are to reduce effort of our fishing fleet and change the target markets. Fishing industries will be more resilient to global pandemics if they fish for locally desire species, in order to not depend of appetites of foreign lands. This would reduce the need for intensified fishing and allow us to properly manage our local fish stocks, with out the pressure of high foreign demand. Within this solution there needs to be programs to buy vessels and train ex fishers to be successful in other industries. The main key to success of a strategy to reduce effort and Total Allowable Catch (TAC) will depend on a Cooperative Management Council composed of Fishermen, official and scientists all being centered around ideals of sustainable stewardship strategies.

Sustainability
Research into population trends of various species of seafood is pointing to a global collapse of seafood species by 2048. Such a collapse would occur due to pollution and overfishing, threatening oceanic ecosystems, according to some researchers.

Some drivers that lead to over fishing are the many intensives to do so, such as subsidies for the industry and profits on a global market. Secondly often the scientific recommendations are not completely fallowed by the fisheries management councils. This is a product of the scientist's having a lack of authority within the industry and communities.

A major international scientific study released in November 2006 in the journal Science found that about one-third of all fishing stocks worldwide have collapsed (with a collapse being defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum observed abundance), and that if current trends continue all fish stocks worldwide will collapse within fifty years. In July 2009, Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, the author of the November 2006 study in Science, co-authored an update on the state of the world's fisheries with one of the original study's critics, Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington at Seattle. The new study found that through good fisheries management techniques even depleted fish stocks can be revived and made commercially viable again.

The FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004 report estimates that in 2003, of the main fish stocks or groups of resources for which assessment information is available, "approximately one-quarter were overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion (16%, 7% and 1% respectively) and needed rebuilding."

A primary cause for global collapse of fisheries are the amplified industrialization strategies used to provide commodities such as seafood and fish products to be sold on a global market. These strategies are not functional with sustainably managing fish stocks due to the main fact that the ecosystem can not support it. The global market is driven by appetites that desire species found around the world. These appetites allow areas such a Portugal and Chile to heavily fish for species that they export but do not consume.

The National Fisheries Institute, a trade advocacy group representing the United States seafood industry, disagree. They claim that currently observed declines in fish population are due to natural fluctuations and that enhanced technologies will eventually alleviate whatever impact humanity is having on oceanic life.

Many small scale fisheries are less able to cope with environmental problems do to externalities of climate change. This problem is not only occurring around the equator but also in the northern Atlantic. Do to warming waters and trends of the North Atlantic Oscillation are hindering the rebuilding to Cod stocks in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. The effects of climate change need to be considered when developing management strategies to sustainably harvest any fish stock. One solution to over fishing may be to produce seafood through aquaculture systems but these farmed species may cause more ecological harm. This harm to the environment can occur in many forms such as increased parasite populations, introduce diseases, escapes out compete native fish for resources and dead zones from too much nutrients and waste in the water.