| Fish farming is hailed as the saviour
of Australian food, according to John Newton from the Sydney
Morning Herald. Wild fish numbers are declining alarmingly.
The May 15 cover story of the magazine ‘Nature’
reveals that only 10 per cent of the world’s fish species
are left.
By 2025, very few affordable fish will be caught in wild
circumstances. Onshore and deep-sea fisherman are finding
it increasingly hard to bring home payable catches, while
the depredations of long range Japanese fishing trawlers on
Australia’s fish stocks in international waters are
making the future of the fishing industry (as we know it now)
increasingly bleak.
One of the authors of the study, Ransom Myer, a world-leading
fisheries biologist based at Dalhousie University in Canada,
wrote: “From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna
and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing
has scoured the ocean floors”.
There have been declines in swordfish, gemfish, orange roughy
and redfish, according to Duncan Leadbitter, of the Marine
Stewardship Council in Australia. “And these are just
the ones we know about”, he says. He says aquaculture
– fish farming – can help ease the pressure on
fish stocks.
Many in the seafood industry are bullish on the farming of
fish. “If it hadn’t been for aquaculture, “says
Sydney marine biologist and seafood consultant Nick Ruello,
“fresh fish would be the province of the rich. The rest
of us would be eating frozen imports.” This is where
Australia’s looming shortage of fish begins. It is already
being reflected in rising prices. Tiger flathead supplies
in Sydney, for example, have declined 20% in two years and
the price has risen 35%.
Already we import 60% of our domestic fish needs and demand
is growing. By 1999, the average Sydney dweller was eating
15.3 kilograms of fish a year and health issues and dietary
style have almost certainly accelerated sales since.
By 2020, according to the Fisheries Research and Development
Corporation, we will need 25% more fish to supply local demand.
And we won’t be able to buy it overseas. With international
catches being slashed – Europe is expected to cut next
years cod quota by a staggering 80% - the prices will be out
of reach of the Australian dollar.
According to the NSW Director of Fisheries, Steve Dunn, 87%
of fish eaten in NSW comes from other states and other locations.
In 2001-2002, NSW farmed 6000 tonnes of 10 different fin
fish, crustaceans and mollusks to the value of just under
$44 million. Nationally, those figures jump up to 44,000
tonnes at almost $750 million. To put that in perspective
globally, one Norwegian company, Panfish, produces 100,000
tonnes a year.
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